Bye-Bye Bolton, Buh-Bye

Good riddance. Aside from that, there's this choice comment, via NYT:

In a strongly worded statement issued this morning, Mr. Bush excoriated Mr. Bolton’s opponents on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for refusing to send his nomination to the Senate floor for a vote.

“They chose to obstruct his confirmation, even though he enjoys majority support in the Senate, and even though their tactics will disrupt our diplomatic work at a sensitive and important time,” Mr. Bush said. “This stubborn obstructionism ill-serves our country, and discourages men and women of talent from serving their nation.”

Majority support in the Senate is, of course, the reason Bush had to make a recess appointment. (Mmm -- and can we talk about "pissy bitches"?)

Steve Clemmons has a nice commentary on the whole thing, with this telling observation:

My problem with Ambassador Bolton was never his cosmetic behavior, it was the content of his views and policy objectives, and the numerous times in which he undermined or sabotaged fragile diplomatic efforts underway and conducted by his colleagues and direct superiors.

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.

That's at the root of my whole problem with the "conservative" attitude toward the UN. It's called self-fulfilling prophecy": if you want it to fail, and if you send an ambassador whose purpose is to make it fail, it will fail. Aside from the childish reaction of those who want to get rid of the UN becuse we don't always get our way (the real problem with any democratic institution, in their eyes), it's the deliberate spoiling that gets to me.