John Bolton...

According to this story on Yahoo!, there's a lot of "controversy" over President Bush's nomination of John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations. I certainly believe that we need a process to screen appointments and that senators have a responsibility to weed out inappropriate appointments, but I think that in this case, like so many others, the criticisms are politically motivated. President Bush and his administration have a stated view of the United Nations, that it is a body in great need of reform that could be effective but isn't. People can disagree with that assessment, but they cannot expect President Bush to nominate someone who doesn't believe the same as he does on this issue; that's the point of being able to nominate people. Otherwise, we'd just have Congress make the appointments.

I don't know much about Mr. Bolton myself, but I have heard his views on the UN; I think he's right. What I don' understand is how certain people in the Senate can see the things that have been going on at the UN over the past several months and think that it doesn't need some reform. Being critical of the UN should not be a bar to being the UN ambassador. Even his "top ten floors" comment isn't really all that extreme; I'm sure we've all said similar things about Congress or another legislative body when we get frustrated about it. I suppose some people may have interpreted that to mean that he literally wants to blow up the top ten floors of the UN building, but those people are obviously not intelligent enough to warrant listening to if they take something like that literally.

Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that the Democrats want someone appointed to the UN who believes the way they do. While they have a right to disagree with Mr. Bolton and President Bush, they do not have a right to block the appointment of a highly qualified individual simply because his views don't line up with theirs. They want to act as if they won the election rather than lost it.