If you can’t beat ’em, resign.
Had U.N. Ambassador John Bolton reflected that type of pragmatic attitude earlier and more often, his diplomatic career might have ended differently than it did Monday – when he announced he would leave the job he had clung to tenaciously since President Bush gave him a recess appointment in August 2005.
Bush circumvented Congress after Republican moderates joined Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in blocking the abrasive Bolton’s appointment to represent America at the international body he had often disparaged. Such appointments, made while Congress is in recess, expire when Congress formally adjourns, as it must in early January.
After Democrats won control of Congress in November, the Bush administration pushed vigorously but futilely for a confirmation vote on Bolton during the current lame-duck session. But all hope for Bolton vanished when Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island – himself a lame duck who lost a re-election bid in the last election – said he would not vote for Bolton either on the Foreign Relations Committee or the Senate floor.
Republican stalwarts like Sen. Lindsey Graham said blocking Bolton’s nomination “unfairly undermines President Bush’s prerogative to appoint his own people to his team.”
We have some sympathy for Graham’s view but also respect the reaction of Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who said, “Hopefully this change marks a shift from the failed go-it-alone strategies that have left America less safe.”
Unquestionably, with Iraq seared by sectarian violence and both Iran and North Korea proceeding with nuclear weapons programs, the U.S. needs to do a better job of working in concert with the international community than it has so far in the Bush years.
Bolton did score some successes on his brief watch, getting U.N. Security Council approval of resolutions imposing sanctions on North Korea for conducting a nuclear test, joining with France to promote Lebanon’s democratic government, pushing for a U.N. peacekeeping force in Sudan’s conflict-wracked Darfur region and putting Myanmar’s repressive military regime on the council’s agenda.
But such cooperative efforts were the exception, not the rule, for Bolton – as indeed they have been for President Bush himself.
The next nominee for this key diplomatic post should have a demonstrated record of helping build international coalitions.
