The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and today’s New York Times editorial pages mostly get it right in opposing John Bolton’s confirmation as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. based on his PERFORMANCE over the past year. 

The L.A. Times focuses not Bolton’s personality but on his inability to deliver results:

Bolton's sledgehammer diplomacy has poisoned an already tense relationship between the U.S. and other countries, including our most important allies. U.N. members see American reform proposals not as ways to improve the organization but as hidden attempts to enhance U.S. power. This helps explain why Bolton has largely failed to achieve his stated goals -- or much of anything else.

Mr. Bolton's handling of the new U.N. Human Rights Council was equally clumsy. He failed to show up at nearly all of the 30 or so negotiating sessions leading up to the council's creation, then waded in at the eleventh hour with a bizarre proposal that the State Department quickly repudiated. Mr. Bolton's spokesman says that the ambassador engaged in good faith throughout the process. But U.S. allies felt that Mr. Bolton did not do so.

Mr. Bolton has embarrassed himself most recently by his mishandling of U.N. management reform, a cause supported by U.N. officials and the richer member states. Mr. Bolton came up with the idea of threatening to cut U.N. funding unless the management reforms were adopted, and his spokesman insists that this brinkmanship was helpful. But South Africa's U.N. envoy called it "poison"; Germany's ambassador called it "wrong"; his British counterpart said it was a mistake to hold the budget hostage. After six months the budget threat was dropped.

But over all, American interests at the U.N. have suffered from Mr. Bolton’s time there, and will suffer more if the Senate confirms him in the job. At a time when a militarily and diplomatically overstretched Washington needs as much international cooperation as it can get — on Iraq, on Iran, on North Korea and now on the latest fighting between Israel and Lebanon — Mr. Bolton is a liability, not an asset at the United Nations.

No ambassador, however tactful and multilateral-minded, can persuade other countries to change their votes on high-profile issues in the face of contrary instructions from their home governments. But some of the most important business that goes on in the U.N. does not fall into that category. On a wide range of issues — winning the support of smaller countries for needed management reforms, mobilizing a strong international coalition to halt genocide in Darfur, attracting wider European support for stabilization and economic development in Iraq — an effective ambassador can make a huge difference.