Bolton appointment sends message to the U.N.

Part of the controversy over Bolton’s nomination stemmed from the fact that he was accused of being abusive toward subordinates and browbeating those with opinions different from his own. How will those accusations affect him as an ambassador to the U.N.? How important are diplomatic skills in his role and what kind of shoes does he have to fill? 

He certainly replaces a very able diplomat in John Danforth, a much different kind of personality, and John Negroponte before him. He does not strike one as the most diplomatic of choices, but I think that was exactly the point.

It’s not clear that he will be weakened in the immediate term. He’s obviously going to have a full mandate and a full plate of work to do. He’ll certainly have the confidence of his boss, namely, the president, and I think that the rest of the world will know that.

This is a president who realizes that he becomes a lame duck in another year or so and wants to make his imprint felt, certainly on an institution like the U.N. where there is such a strained relationship with the United States.

How will it affect other aspects of Bush’s political agenda that require bipartisan  support — like the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court?

On the issue of Roberts, the White House is pretty much satisfied with the reaction that he has gotten. The nomination does not appear to be in any doubt.

While Democrats will not be happy with the Bolton recess appointment, the White House probably factored that in and suspects that they could weather that bit of controversy from Democrats. So, Bush has made the political calculations that he thinks he can get away with.

Is the fact that Bush was forced to make a recess appointment of Bolton a political defeat for the Bush administration?

It’s a defeat in the sense that they couldn’t get their guy through. They’ll wait to see perhaps what happens with a new Congress in January 2007.

But Democrats expect the president to poke a finger in their eye, and he’s done that. The president wants what he wants and he is going to do what he has to do to get somebody like this through. 

I think it goes back to the administration’s feeling about the United Nations and how much it needs to be shaken up. They are not going to shy away from putting somebody up there who expresses the more hard-line aspects of this administration. It really says something about the stamp this president wants to put on foreign policy.

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