"This nomination is not doomed, but it's on life support and the plug may well be pulled any day," said Allan J. Lichtman, a political history professor at American University.
GOP support for Bolton cracked during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing early last week, so the chairman decided to postpone a vote that Bolton would have lost.
Since then, the White House has defended Bolton daily and blamed Democrats for playing politics with the nomination. Yet each new day has brought fresh allegations that Bolton dressed down subordinates or behaved, as one former colleague claimed, "like a madman," when he was crossed.
The charges come on top of unease over Bolton's past hostility toward the United Nations and allegations that the political appointee tried to pressure career intelligence analysts into twisting the facts for political reasons.
I think we need Bolton at the UN as a needed hammer to bang some sense into that body. It would be nice to strengthen its ability to do humanitarian work and take the politics out that let thug states have the same influence as real democracies when it comes to deciding global consensus.
The people who think they are defending the UN by opposing Bolton are stupid. Seriously stupid. They've clearly been visited by the F-U Fairy who sprinked pixie dust in their eyes. If the UN continues on the way it is, it will be more easy for us to ignore it and act unilaterally (and I mean really unilaterally, not the "those allies don't count" form of unilateralism we are accused of practicing). When the raping, lying, cheating, and stealing UN just goes on its merry way, there will be little penalty for the US to ignore the corrupt body.
So it is kind of win-win for the United States. Either Bolton is confirmed and he makes some headway into cleaning up that cesspool; or he is not confirmed and it becomes easier for us to ignore a morally challenged institution when the likes of Zimbabwe and China claim to wave the banner of the international community.
Just on the principle that hypocritical double standards shouldn't derail this nomination, I hope that a whole bunch of people get a spine infusion and learn that giving in won't earn them any good will from those who oppose Bolton.
It sure as heck won't save the UN from itself.
