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06/29/2005: The Bolton fiasco plays out....
Josh Marshall, citing Steve Clemons, notes that the White House and Senate Republican leadership has pretty well given up on shepherding the Bolton nomination through the Senate. Hot damn! There's spending "political captial" for you. Josh further notes:
What remains to be seen now is whether President Bush will bypass the senate and install Bolton at the UN by a recess appointment.Well.... You do have to credit Bush for his tenacity. He decides he wants something done, and he spares no effort or expense to get it done.
For starters, it's worth saying that that's the president's right. Whether it's fair in the abstract is just as irrelevant as the question is about the filibuster.
But it is also becoming increasingly clear that winning on Bolton is more important to the White House than having someone in that position who would be in any way effective in the job by any measure. He would, I assume, be the first UN Ambassador ever to be seated who quite publicly lacked the confidence of the United States senate. And what does it tell you exactly about President Bush's foreign policy priorities today -- and all the challenges that the country currently faces in Iraq and elsewhere -- that he's putting so much into sustaining this single nomination? There's nothing else going on in the world that could use the attention and political muscle more than this?
But his choice of goals to exert that effort and spend that expense gives one the impression that Dubya was either born incompetent, or else studied assiduously for years to achieve incompetence. A stunning achievement in any event.
Len on 06.29.05 @ 07:29 AM CST
