Breaking Down the NYTimes
The New York Times had an "interesting" editorial today on the Bolton appointment. It gave me a chuckle and prompted some thoughts. I've inserted them directly in the editorial.

August 2, 2005
Ambassador Bolton

If there's a positive side to President Bush's appointment of John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations yesterday, it's that as long as Mr. Bolton is in New York, he will not be wreaking diplomatic havoc anywhere else. Talks with North Korea, for instance, have been looking more productive since Mr. Bolton left the State Department ["looking more productive" -- what kind of drivel is that? This is your typical liberal smear tactic. How does one measure "looking more productive"? You can't. But, you can imply that things have improved since Bolton's departure. What tripe.], and it's hard not to think that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's generally positive performance in office is due, in part, to her canniness in dispatching Mr. Bolton out of Washington.

But the appointment is, of course, terrible news for the United Nations, whose diplomats have heard weeks of Senate testimony about Mr. Bolton's lack of respect for their institution [So, are you saying that this testimony was uncalled for?? No, it was the Senate obstruction crew and the liberals like the writers of this editorial who dragged Bolton through the mud for weeks.] and his deeply undiplomatic, bullying style of doing business [After all the witch-hinting and opposition research, this is the entire nub of the liberal objection to Bolton -- he's a "bully". "Whaa. Mommy, Johnny Bolton threw sand on me!! He's a big bully. I don't want to play with him anymore!! Whaa!" Can you believe this stuff?]. Senator George Voinovich, the Ohio Republican who became one of Mr. Bolton's strongest critics, said yesterday that he planned to send the new ambassador a book on how to be an effective manager [Very funny. Maybe someone buy Voinovich an appointment calendar -- he missed almost every hearing on Bolton, but showed up at the end and suddenly decided to jump on the anti-Bolton bandwagon.] It couldn't hurt, but this may be the first time a world superpower has used its top United Nations post as a spot for the remedial training of a troublesome government employee.

Mr. Bush had been unable to get Mr. Bolton's nomination confirmed by the Senate, so he waited until Congress left town and used his constitutional power to make recess appointments. This is a perfectly legal tactic, though one that has seldom been used to fill this kind of position. A recess appointment is particularly dicey for a major diplomatic post, where a good nominee should carry an aura of personal gravitas and legitimacy [like the aura of personal gravitas and legitimacy that emanates from Kofi Anan?].

The problem here from the beginning has been that Mr. Bush clearly has little respect for either the United Nations or international diplomacy in general [and after all the UN and the international community have done to earn our respect too. There was that heroic U.N. intervention in Rwanda. And the integrity of the French, Germans and Russians in abiding by numerous international treaties and U.N. resolutions prohibiting arms sales to Iraq. Or, how about the U.N. "peace keepers" in Srebrenica who prevented the massacre of hundreds of civilians. Oops, sorry, none of those things happened. Nevertheless, it's so important to respect the U.N. -- maybe Bush should nominate John Kerry for U.N. Ambassador!].

There is plenty to complain about at the United Nations, but real work happens there [really, like what? -- maybe a draft resolution to consider the need to form a committee to prepare a report on the possibilty of the convergence of tidal moss in the Aleutian Islands?], and it requires the services of men and women who know how to wring agreement out of a group of wildly different and extremely self-interested representatives. The president has not just sent the United Nations what Senator Christopher Dodd accurately termed "damaged goods." [This is classic liberal politics -- spend months trashing Bolton and then complain he's "damaged goods". This is the equivalent to Lizzie Borden pleading for mercy from the court because she's an orphan!] In Mr. Bolton, he has selected goods that weren't appropriate for the task even before the Senate began to hold hearings - when Mr. Bolton's reputation was still in one piece.

The United Nations could certainly be improved, but Mr. Bolton is a poor candidate for a reformer. To make the institution better, the Bush administration would first have to show that it has a vision of what the U.N. could be. [Bush does have such a vision -- and Bolton's the man for the job. That's what the liberals are so worked up about. The liberals want to give us more of the same. Bush and Bolton are likely to say "let's take a flamethrower to this place!] That vision has to begin by accepting the fact that nations other than the United States have a right to have a say, and sometimes take the lead.