CONFIRM BOLTON NOW
NEW YORK POST
Opinion/Editorial
May 16, 2005
The nomination of John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations finally cleared the Foreign Relations Committee last week and is heading for the Senate floor, but Democrats are still working to torpedo it on everything — save the actual merits.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) announced at week's end that she is placing a "hold" on the nomination until the State Department forks over a barrel-full of documents demanded by the Dems in hopes of finding a smoking gun to sink Bolton once and for all.
Placing a hold means the nomination is subject to an open-ended delay. It would take 60 votes to override a hold — and then any other senator, or even Boxer herself, could announce another hold.
Of course, Democrats were helped along Thursday by the histrionics of Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio), who said he opposes the nomination, but that he would not block a full Senate vote.
Voinovich said he determined Bolton's unsuitability while "poring over the hundreds of pages of testimony."
Of course, if the senator actually had attended the hearings at which that testimony was heard, he might have formed a different opinion.
As it is, Voinovich placed himself — as have the Democrats — in the bizarre position of picking a fight with someone who thinks America needs to get tough with the United Nations.
That is, the same body that has — most recently — ignored genocide in Rwanda and Darfur and named Zimbabwe (!) to its human-rights commission.
Is this really what Democrats want?
They may well win this particular battle, but at what political cost?
John Kerry campaigned last year on the notion that America needs more, not less, U.N. influence in its foreign-policy making — and he paid a heavy price for it.
Now he's busily running again for the White House; last week he asked: "Who is [Bolton] speaking for?"
That's similar to the question critics hurled at Daniel Patrick Moynihan during his term as U.N. ambassador, now widely regarded as among the most significant in the world body's history.
State Department bureaucrats despised Moynihan and continually worked to undercut him. Most U.N. diplomats — including U.S. allies — agreed with the British envoy, who publicly compared him to Wyatt Earp and complained that "he's not making my job any easier."
That's because Moynihan himself had declared, in what could serve as an eloquent rebuke to Bolton's foes, that "the main point of public diplomacy, which the U.N. is, is not to paper over differences, but to make their existence known and to make them clear."
Pat Moynihan spoke truth to corruption during his two years at Turtle Bay. John Bolton must have the opportunity to do the same — immediately.
The U.S. Senate goes into recess at the end of this week. Its calendar is full, and Majority Leader Bill Frist wants to begin the confirmation of judicial nominees that have been filibustered for years.
This is an important issue.
But so is the Bolton appointment.
Further delay on this nomination gives the president's enemies time to bring more scurrilous charges; they'll do anything to derail this nomination.
That would be unfair to Bolton.
But it would be grievously unjust to allow such tactics to prevent the appointment of a man who can help bring reform to a world body in desperate need of it.
Move the nomination, Sen. Frist.
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