OK. I'll bite. Clearly, Mr. Clemons, you want us all to know you'll take the high road in this political discussion. Very noble; very commendable and all that. I feel differently. Bolton and the Bush administration are not to my mind gentleman adversaries with a different rationale for what they do; by your take what they do is (of course) for the best interest of this country as they understand it. Bull. They have been in the gutter from day one causing the world, grief and misery and death and destruction and to a great extent destroying the comity and traditions (legal and otherwise) of this country; the only thing they hate more than their foreign "enemies" are their domestic opponents and everything has been geared to destroying their character, their livelihood and their freedom. Go tip your hat to Ambassador Bolton; maybe it will help you get a better job or help your career along in some way. I have no use for them or for our gentleman advocates from the respectable opposition.

Steve,

I'll say what you can't - Bolton is an arrogant bully.

Tom

Let's not forget bloodthirsty.

Steve- In #4 you ended by saying, The President's dropping of Bolton may very well be designed to facilitate a fast confirmation process for Gates.

What is to stop Bush from doing another recess appointment of Bolton? The usual repug modus operandi is to act like they are being conciliatory and then stab you in the back.

If only I could be so high-minded. Me, I wish Bolton -- and I know he reads TPM (not just The Washington Note) -- a daily reminder that blood is on his hands.

I don't play nice, gracious with people who say that the "US should recognize obligations only when it's in our interest."

Bolton is a cheat and a loser. I hope we never hear again from that dolt.

=== I agree that it is always more respectable and correct to let someone concede with a bit of dignity as opposed to setting the hounds at his naked throat. ===

Have you talked to Grover "Castrate the Democrats" Norquist about that? That has been the tone of the Republican Party for the last 12 years. And not just the Radicals who are currently running the GOP; the entire lot of them. How much of that should citizens of good faith put up with? 15 years? 30 years? A "generation"?

The plain fact is that the Republicans interpret politeness and good faith as weakness, and redouble their attacks. Bolton is sinking; throw him an anvil.

sPh

I've been trying to figure out why Bush would even try to get Bolton through committee again. It really doesn't make much sense. I don't agree with the assessment that it will look like 'Bush is giving up something he really wants' in order to ease confirmation of others. He pledges greater cooperation with Democrats one day, then pushes Bolton the next? A move like that does not work unless you are playing from a position of relative strength. Coming from the extremely unpopular and untrustworthy Bush, it only steels the opposition's resolve.

So, I'm really at a loss to explain it and I think the press is at a loss as well. It makes zero sense. Everyone expects conciliation; genuine at that.

Of course, at this point I don't expect smart decisions to come out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Really - That's all I'm left with as well. Bush is just so incompetent and absolutely blinkered to reality that he thinks he can get this nomination done if he just says 'do it!' I know Senator Chaffee is a lame duck and all, but he MUST still have a phone in his office. They could have called, right? It really is weird.

How many hat tips can you give a man who has made it a point to stick it in your eye every chance he got? John Bolton, representing our nation in the principle forum of nations, took every opportunity to hinder and defile not just the actors within the UN but the very enterprise of international cooperation and power. As an ideologue utterly convinced of his own ideology, Mr. Bolton was, as has been the case for so many Bush appointees, completely wrong for the job. The destruction he has wreaked will impede progress for some time to come.

Bolton fits the Bush model of employing people who are constitutionally opposed to the very institutions they are employed to oversee, leading to failure and destruction on most fronts. Brownie, Rummy, Ashcroft and Gonzales, EPA, all either incompetent or competent in their disdain for the institutions they have been employed to manage.

Now, just as Mr. "We don't need no stinkin' international cooperation" Bolton steps down from his post as chief international agreement wrecker, we find that the US is backed into a corner in Iraq with practially no good options for "Victory", and where are we looking for help? Lo and behold, there's all this talk about how we may need to negotiate assistance of some sort from Iran and Syria, Turkey, perhaps international peacekeepers.

I just wonder how many of the nations that have been slapped around by Mr. Bolton will be coming to the table looking to make nice with the US, help us out of our predicament. And how long before we realize that we actually need to cooperate with other nations (in a way that fosters good will as well as good agreements) in order to be successful. If the Iraq debacle is not a complete repudiation of Bolton's and the neocon anti-internationalist ideology yet, it should be.

I appreciate Mr. Clemons effort here not to make Bolton's politics personal, hence all the hat tipping, but much of what Bolton did during his tenure was reprehensible in its outright damage to our national interests, and a big part of Bolton's attitude in his job is a personal affront to me. That he would represent all Americans in his role as ambassador without giving one whit of care to either the American internationalist tradition of the past 60 years, nor the significant portion of us Americans who still actually respect the interests of people and nations around the world, Bolton's every step, every word, was a stick in the eye.

Perhaps Mr. Clemons would instruct us to, as in AA, hate the behavior, love the man. Fine. I say kick Bolton's policies in the ass on their way out the door.

If you want a second opinion besides that of your diplomat friend, what I would say is that Bolton should be investigated the way Clinton was and railroaded off to jail for the rest of his natural life.

Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between.

I want to do the same thing again. I do wish Ambassador Bolton and his family well. He is a brilliant person who cloaked his designs in a style of pugnaciousness and occasional bullying that served his ends -- though I think not as often the country's.

. . . John Bolton, in my view, saw a significant portion of his job as not to achieve success at the United Nations but rather to set the UN up for failure.

If John Bolton were going to disappear and never be heard from again, I would agree with all the calls for "forgive and forget." But he isn't! He's currentlly trying to get a job as a TV pundit where he will have a platform to continue to spead his poisons.

Well, I for one don't want to make nice! This is flat drivel! A "brilliant man"? What conceivable sign of brilliance is it to destroy the U.N.?

Bolton is a fanatic who believes overall in unbridled power to crush everyone in the world who disagrees or disuptes with him or his twisted vision for the world.

He should be set upon by wild-dogs. And I don't give a damn if that makes me look "vindictive." This is a seriously EVIL man who makes the world a more dangerous place for his having lived in it.

We need to keep hammering and destroying his reputation so that he cannot appear in public without being repudiated. So that his value as a shill for unbridled military power and overreaching will be broken.

Why is it that "moderates" and liberals love to wallow in "bi-partisanship" and magnaminity, while conservatives get to mount endless campaigns about Clinton, yet nobody calls them "vindictive" or tells the rabid right that their current attacks on Jimmy Carter are "unseemly"?

This is a total war to the death between those who want an livable planet with decent standards for all, versus those who want to rape and destroy everything in the interests of unbridled power and unprecedented wealth for the privileged few.

The thing (and the ONLY thing) that stopped Bush from doing another recess appointment is the law. The only way that one person can serve twice in the same office through a recess appointment is to do so without compensation. Although I'm sure Halliburton would have agreed to pay Bolton so as to let him keep his penthouse appt in New York, it would look so bad that EVEN THIS WHITE HOUSE knows better than to go that route.

They toyed with the idea of appointing him to a position that would not require approval in Congress (some State Dept position) and then appoint him as "Deputy Ambassador" or some such BS as that. I think that even old John was too embarassed to get the job that way. In the end, they just had to give up.

I don't believe for a minute that Dubya did this as some kind of concession to play nice so that Gates would get through without problems. They were at check mate, and they knew it. Bolton had nowhere to go but out the door. Good riddance! (I'd love to see what he cost us in salary, benies, housing, and entertainment for his time in office! Probably enough to rebuild part of New Orleans; however priorities ARE priorities!

Jan Knaus

On the day that Hillary formally announced her candidacy for pres., Tucker Carlson got off his opening salvo to what we can expect from those high-minded, polite Republicans for the nauseating next two years.

Quote, "The people of New York only elected Clinton to the Senate because her husband cheated on her." (Not only are Repubs crude and rude, they're brainless.)

"The people of New York only elected Clinton to the Senate because her husband cheated on her." (Not only are Repubs crude and rude, they're brainless.)

So if that's the reason they elected her, what reason do they give for overwhelmingly reelecting her after 6 years in office? Certainly, if her votes and initiatives were so bad, sympathy her wouldn't be enough reason to vote for her against ....who?

I would like to give a tip of the hat to anyone who spent their entire working life in service to his or her country...

I just can't do it with John Bolton. 

I am not happy that he is gone, just relieved.  He wasn't a diplomat to begin with, he was a partisan political hack sent to make a mafia style hit on the institution of the UN.  I have no respect for him professionally and in that regard I loathe everything he and his fellow neocons stand for. 

Losing Robert Zoellick, Philip Zelikow and John Bolton is an awful lot to lose without having clear successsors in place and ready to go. The already stretched thin Secretary of State will be stretched even thinner with Bolton's departure.

[my emphasis]

This is the large and very important point. Rice is demonstrating a lack of competence as the CEO of a very large organization that must have a continuity of personnel. She should have had lists of people she and the administration had already considered to fill very senior posts as they were opened up. And if she did not know to do that then the President's Chief of Staff should have been on her case. Foreign policy and international dealing are critical to this Presidency.

To date Rice has acted more as a presidential envoy than the CEO of the State Dept.

I could be tempted to agree, but I must say that John Bolton has done at least as much as could have been expected from him.

When he was selected as the White House's appointee, his anti-diplomatic style was well known - not to say very well known, and so were his denigrating views on other nations and on the whole idea of the United Nations.

In case he'd acted against the interests of the American nation, as perceived by the President of the United States, we can be convinced he'd been replaced a very long time ago.

Any criticism ought to be directed against his superiors, the president and the people that had elected that president, whos policies he meritoriously pursued.

The imprint of mr Bolton's tenure will remain. In that sense, he deserves much respect for his competence.

/Tuomas

Their competence in being completely incompetent?

Ambassadors are generally selected because they are big donors to whichever political party is in power.

Tom