An entire column of buttons will be stripped from every elevator in Secretariat: John Bolton is going to the United Nations. His confirmation twice prevented by filibuster and his fitness for office challenged, the former Under Secretary for Arms Control was the recipient of a presidential recess appointment. George W. Bush announced at a press conference that Bolton will be sent to Turtle Bay with his "complete confidence," and, unnecessary to add, with no further advice or consent from the United States Senate.
Senate Democrats must have known that politics would arbitrate the sixteen-week dispute. In each failed cloture vote was a majority of senators who would likely have voted "Aye" for confirmation if debate ended, meaning Bolton would fall only if a humiliated White House withdrew him. President Bush's perseverance still surprised the many Democratic Montressors who, bereft of the Fortunato they had thought walled in, took second best and burned Bolton in effigy.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid called Bolton "weakened" like a burglar might call a house he just left "robbed." Former presidential challenger John Kerry accepted Bush's recess prerogative but decried "the wrong decision," presumably made at the wrong place and time. As for Republicans opposed to an Ambassador Bolton, it is assumed that from the hallway outside Republican George Voinovich's Hart Building office one could hear muffled sobs.
Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy, after dispensing invective, waxed erudite and questioned the constitutionality of recess appointments for candidates beyond the judiciary. Two-century precedent aside, honest inquiries have been submitted from the right as well — if only conducted as an anniversary ritual, since the point is partly academic and in these circumstances extraordinarily weak. How exactly is it proper to supplant the Constitution (very clear on advice and consent) with arbitrary Senate rules (altogether silent on the filibuster)? Floating about is the phrase "unconfirmed," which leftists hope might settle on John Bolton's brow. Railroaded by the executive, selected-not-elected. But what of two majorities from the Senate, representing the American people? Democrats are angry but they seem plaintive, too: whatever embarrassment John Bolton and President Bush suffered will have long faded by the beginning of the 110th Congress.
The ambassador, remember, will be dispatched not to the Democratic National Headquarters but to the United Nations. Nearly every attributable quote from Secretariat on the recess appointment is complimentary and anticipatory — some of it feigned, much of it valuable to those quoted, all of it John Bolton's political fortune. The United Nations is in a lot of trouble. Sit dictators with statesmen and you will soon have all statesmen — that was the promise in evoking the sacred from the profane, alchemy as inconceivable as turning lead to gold but with the entire world as an unfortunate smelter. What sixty years has revealed is what we already knew: even the Lord of Hosts redeems only those willing. Charity? The monies and prestige of a dozen upright democracies has passed through the hands of bureaucrat oligarchs and into the possession of the world's last tyrants. Peace and goodwill? Heinous dictators elect each other to head up commissions intended to mitigate their iniquity — draw squares on Eleanor Roosevelt's Universal Declaration of Human Rights and you would have a marathon dance floor. The left and the media establishment, who have long regarded the liberation of Iraq as President Bush's folly, stand in front of an outrage that could only have been exposed as a consequence of invasion and looms ever larger.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan is one of those bureaucrats whose innocence in Oil-for-Food and Security Council corruption is suspect, to where one may speculate on the possibility of both his resignation and criminal prosecution. "Very able and very bright" was Annan's take on Bolton. "Hell no" was Annan's take on stepping down for overseeing the greatest swindle on Earth. Now, if Annan has done wrong, he cannot know the extent to which the Bush administration understands. That would explain both the White House's magnanimity and the Secretary General's complaisance over the last twelve months. Washington has demands of Turtle Bay that deserve to be met, so if it is Kofi Annan's vanity with which President Bush wields leverage, so be it.
General Assembly members have been equally approving. John Bolton received kudos from Russia, Germany, Chile, Denmark and Algeria; the thread running through one of competence and professionalism. Bolton will also be heading to Secretariat as scores of nations jockey for a say or a seat on the United Nations Security Council, looking to the sitting major powers for a good word. Representatives from the Group of Four nations or the African Union or any Assembly clique would treat President Bush's ambassador with respect if he were a dressed-up, barking sea lion.
There is reform and renovation to be done by John Bolton. If he intends to remain at his post for the next Congressional session Bolton can expect little trouble. Instead of the left's cartoon character the Senate will face a man with recent, probably very impressive, experience. Democrats left over from the 2006 midterm elections may still find cause to grumble and vote against but for the public record John Bolton will most assuredly prove his critics wrong.