One year later, here we are again with John Bolton. George Voinovich, the waffling Republican Senator from Ohio who let the UN Ambassador’s nomination out of committee, has declared in the Washington Post that if Bolton’s nomination is sent back to the Senate, he will now vote for the controversial Bush pick.

Opponents of Bolton’s tenure at the UN, this one included, should have known this was coming, seen it for what it was, and then we should have struck first. The Weekly Standard’s blogger Daniel McKivergan declared in a June 7 post that, “Senate Republicans should make Democrats squirm and seek a confirmation vote on the recessed-appointed(sic) Bolton as soon as possible.” As a nervous Republican power base in the US Senate looks to November, they see a new round of Bolton hearings as an opportunity to take the Democrats to the cleaners, painting them as best buddies of the appeasers of tyrants and enablers of corruption at the United Nations. Voinovich, with his talk of sending the wrong message to the terrorists, is just the tip of the spear. The Senate Republican leadership clearly sees this circus as an opportunity for some of their weaker co-conspirators to run over Democrat challengers on national security when Election Day rolls around back home.

If the Democrats are going to keep the Bolton re-nomination from being a boondoggle, they need to run on something smarter than the strategy we saw in the spring and summer of 2005. They must concentrate on Bolton’s record as a diplomat over the past year.

The strategy to block Bolton’s nomination started out on the wrong foot. It focused on three planks: Bolton’s role in intelligence manipulation, his disdain for the UN, and what Voinovich clumsily refers to as his “interpersonal skills” – some anecdotes about Bolton flying off the handle and treating colleagues harshly. But these issues were never going to resound with the Republican senators who might be persuaded to change their mind on the nomination.

First, few GOP senators have enthusiasm for making decisions based on the Bush administration’s intelligence chicanery – something in which Bolton clearly was no more than a bit player to start with. Next, most GOP senators don’t like the UN much either, and see anything that hurts the international body as something that will probably help it. Finally, attacks on Bolton’s personal behavior weren’t going to fly either, as nothing he did or said to former colleagues or underlings came anywhere close to what was said about Clarence Thomas by Anita Hill – and even that Supreme Court Justice was confirmed.

Effectively, Democrats were asking Republican senators to vote against Bolton for being a loyal Republican.

What should have happened was a primed assault on Bolton’s record of accomplishment during his years as Undersecretary of States for Arms Control and International Security, the post he held from 2001 through 2005. Republicans tried to celebrate the thin accomplishments of Bolton’s career during the confirmation hearings, but Democrats did little to indict his oversights that made America less safe.

Consider, for instance, the dispute between the United States and Russia on an agreement to dispose of plutonium left over from old nuclear weapons. During Bolton’s years in the State Department, negotiations foundered so badly that Republican Senator Pete Domenici took the unusual step of asking to testify before the Foreign Relations Committee chaired by Senator Richard Lugar and demanded that President Bush fire Bolton – only one year prior to his nomination as UN Ambassador for the US. As soon as Bolton left the Arms Control division of the State Department, the negotiations sailed ahead.

Or, look at the problem of Iraq’s WMD scientists and engineers, unemployed and unpaid, who the US still fears might go to work for states like Iran and Syria. An article in Mother Jones last September revealed how Anne Harrington, a former State Department official with a lengthy career of developing programs to prevent Russian nuclear weapons scientists from working for rogue states, found roadblocks against her efforts to get a scientist retention program up and running in Iraq. The problem: Bolton’s uncompromising and counterintuitive belief that Iraqi weapons scientists should all be treated as criminals.

Finally, consider how difficult it is to view Bolton as a credible voice in the war against terrorism. He told the House International Relations Committee in a 2004 hearing that when it came to the Mujahedin e-Khalq, a group labeled as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department, he didn’t have “any inhibition” about the United States cooperating with them.

These and other points from Bolton’s record outline some of the tactics that critics of the nomination could have used to stop Bolton. They need to consider how well last year's attacks played with potential swing voters as they move forward. Instead of letting Republicans tar them with the weaknesses of the UN, Democrat Senators need to make the Bolton debate all about the chronic failure of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. The Ambassador is no longer merely a functionary in the executive branch’s bureaucratic ditches. Instead, he is conducting the Bush administration’s diplomacy at one of its highest levels, where the stakes are much greater. In the run up to the election, they will succeed in thumping Republican supporters of Bolton if they ask the right questions.

In the area of UN diplomacy, Democrats should ask why Sudan's allies have checkmated us on almost every move related to the genocide in Darfur? Additionally why are we so incapable of getting the UN Security Council to take strong positions against the missile and nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran? Moreover, has Bolton succeed in keeping states that complicate American interests off of key bodies like the Security Council?

When it comes to UN reform, it is not clear that Bolton has succeeded either. What ever happened to Bolton’s proposal to change the formula used to determine which states pay for most UN activities? Are we any closer to the priorities for UN reform outlined by Senators and Representatives in the past year? Why did the US proposal for an improved human rights body at the UN fail? And, will the US get a candidate for Secretary-General that it can work with?

Democrats in the Senate need to approach the Bolton problem with the right attitude. They should be counting the number of days until Bolton’s tenure is over; not the number of votes they need to stymie his nomination. By attacking Bolton on his concrete record of achievement – the place where he is weakest – they can make sure that the only handshake the Ambassador receives is the one he gets on his way out the door.