JUST IN! BUSH LOSES ANOTHER SENATE VOTE
Democrats win crucial Bolton vote
Showdown on U.N. nominee's confirmation now will be delayed for at least a week
By Tom Curry
National affairs writer
MSNBC
Updated: 7:20 p.m. ET May 26, 2005
WASHINGTON - In a major setback for President Bush, the Senate voted Thursday to delay a confirmation vote on John Bolton, Bush’s choice to be U.S. envoy to the United Nations.
Bolton opponents won on a vote to end debate on his nomination. Under Senate rules, at least 60 votes were needed to close debate, but the final tally was 56 to 42.
Bolton’s confirmation vote will now be delayed for at least a week, until the Senate returns from its Memorial Day recess.
In a last-ditch effort, two Democratic senators, Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, had worked Thursday to round up the 41 votes needed to stop Bolton's nomination.
"It'll be very close," Biden had predicted earlier Thursday afternoon.
The dramatic roll call underscored that, despite the compromise the two parties’ centrists forged just days ago in a bitter dispute over judicial nominees, most senators still had a taste for partisan confrontation over a polarizing figure like Bolton.
It also raised questions about Bush’s ability to win confirmation of some of his more ideological appointees. And it was a setback for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., who was hoping to end nearly three months of delays and investigation and finally deliver Bolton’s nomination for the president.
Frist said the Bolton matter soured the air of cooperation.
“John Bolton, the very first issue we turned to, we got what looks to me like a filibuster,” Frist said. “It certainly sounds like a filibuster ... it quacks like a filibuster.”
Democrats contended the White House had stiff-armed the Senate over classified information on Bolton’s tenure in his current job as the State Department’s arms control chief, and demanded more information before the Senate can give Bolton an up-or-down vote.
Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., said Democrats do not want to postpone an up-or-down vote indefinitely.
“We are willing to vote 10 minutes after we get back in session, if in fact they provide the information,” Biden said.
Frist suffered his first setback of the week when a group of bipartisan senators short-circuited his proposal to change Senate rules on using the filibuster delaying tactic to scuttle judicial nominees.
But he regained the momentum Wednesday when the Senate voted 55 to 43 to confirm appeals court nominee Priscilla Owen, whose nomination had been stymied for four years by Senate Democrats.
Frist pivots quickly
Dodd complained Wednesday that Frist had swiftly pivoted after the Owen vote to the Bolton nomination.
“I’m surprised amid all the controversy about federal judges why we’re not dealing with some of those (judicial nominees) at this particular moment,” he said.
But it seemed clear that Frist had made a deft maneuver by quickly moving to push the Senate to vote on the U.N. envoy, right after his victory on Owen.
Some Democrats voted to end debate on Bolton but said they would vote against the Bolton nomination itself.
And Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, Bolton’s harshest critic among Republicans, said he, too, would vote to end debate, even though he will vote “no” on Bolton’s nomination.
Voinovich made a passionate speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, portraying Bolton as abrasive, undiplomatic and unfit to serve as U.N. envoy.
“I don't want to take the risk” of confirming Bolton, Voinovich declared, his voice choked with emotion. “I came back here and ran for a second term because I'm worried about my kids and my grandchildren.”
Bolton foe sees 'overwhelming pressure'
Voinovich later told reporters that all senators are under “overwhelming pressure” to “go along with the president” even though “very few people are enthusiastic” about the choice of Bolton to be U.N. ambassador.
Biden and Dodd were trying to use the cloture vote as leverage to force the Bush administration to hand over documents on Bolton's work on Syria and on weapons of mass destruction.
Bolton now serves as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. His portfolio includes preventing the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
For Biden, one of the key questions had been, as he told reporters Wednesday, “Did Bolton attempt to badger or change the views of intelligence officers relating to whether or not Syria had weapons of mass destruction at critical juncture (in July 2003) when all of you and all of us were asking ‘Is Syria next?’”
Dispute over Syria documents
Biden accused the Bush administration of withholding the Syria documents because the papers and e-mails “will show that Bolton tried to intimidate the intelligence community” into concurring with “an assertion that it was highly probable that Syria had weapons of mass destruction” in 2003.
Biden and Dodd also want information from the National Security Agency on electronic intercepts — phone conversations and e-mail traffic — involving ten U.S. citizens.
“The issue was raised (as to) why did Bolton make so many requests and why was he seeking what is somewhat unusual the names of specific Americans who were identified in the intercepts,” Biden said.
“The administration has stonewalled us on both of those requests,” he said.
Biden was fuming because administration officials did not invoke constitutional arguments about separation of powers, but merely “concluded that the information the committee was seeking was not relevant to our inquiry.”
Referring to Bush administration officials, Biden asked, “Who died and left them boss?”
But Bolton supporter Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, had his own rhetorical question, “Where does legitimate due diligence turn into partisanship? Where does the desire for the truth turn into a competition over who wins and who loses?”
'Elections matter'
Another Bolton ally, Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., said that Bush, having won a second term last November, deserved to have the person he wanted representing the United States at the United Nations.
“Elections matter,” Coleman said. “And the president of the United States won the election.”
The bad blood between Senate Democrats and Bolton stretches back 20 years.
In 1986, when he served as assistant attorney general in charge of liaison with Congress, he battled Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. over the nomination of William Rehnquist to be chief justice.
The issue then — as now with the Syria documents — was the executive branch withholding information that senators wanted.
Kennedy wanted memos Rehnquist had written while serving in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Despite a scolding from Kennedy in a public hearing of the Judiciary Committee, Bolton rejected his demands.
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