Makin' me proud but not really

Senate Republicans are wimps. Plain and simple. They've teetered on the verge of folding on the issue of judicial nominees and filibusters and yesterday Ohio Republican Senator George Voinovich blindsided Committee chairman Richard Lugar when he thought he was bringing the committee together for a vote on President Bush's UN-Ambassador designate John Bolton.

NRO's editors lay it out quite nicely: That some Republicans are willing to take at face value the Democrats' personal attacks on Bolton is shameful. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R., Furrowed Brow) pronounces himself troubled by the allegations. But he supported John McCain for president in 2000-- since when is a docile temperament his test of whether someone can be an important public servant? Hagel is a fairly reliable conservative vote on routine matters. It's just when the chips are down that you can't count on him.

In the key allegation against Bolton, he is said to have intimidated a State Department intelligence analyst who objected to Bolton's supposedly too-dire assessment of Cuba's bioweapons program. But Bolton aide Fred Fleitz has testified that the analyst in question, Christian Westerman, wasn't straight with Bolton or his staff-- giving Bolton plenty of reason to be upset. At issue was language in a speech Bolton was to deliver about Cuba. It was Westerman's responsibility to run the proposed language by the CIA, but when he did so he attached his own prejudicial language dissenting from Bolton's views. When Fleitz learned this, Westerman falsely denied having done it, leading to the infamous confrontation in Bolton's office. Two of Westerman's supervisors subsequently apologized for how he handled the matter. That Bolton is now the one being pilloried for this spat--Sen. Chris Dodd said his conduct should be "indictable"--is absurd. In any case, as Lugar pointed out in a statement earlier this week, in an environment characterized by contentious policy disputes--as Bush's foreign policy team was in the first term--you can expect some personal contention.

Those policy disputes are at the bottom of the charges against Bolton. This is the revenge of the State department bureaucracy and its former servants Colin Powell and Dick Armitage. Contrary to former State department bureaucrat Carl Ford's smear of Bolton as a "kiss up, kick down" kind of guy, Bolton repeatedly clashed with Powell and Armitage over substance. Now they are hitting back. It is difficult to believe that Powell's former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson would viciously attack Bolton on the record in the New York Times without Powell's assent. Although perhaps we should be grateful for an on-the-record Times quote by a Powell loyalist for a change. If the Bolton nomination is beaten, it will be a lesson to conservatives that they dare clash with a recalcitrant Washington bureaucracy only at great potential personal cost. Which is one of just many reasons why President Bush should use every bit of leverage at his disposal to win Bolton's confirmation.

As for Voinovich, had he bothered to attend last week's hearing he'd know what he needs to know. Sadly, Mr. Bolton may pay the price for his laziness and his political naivete (we're watching the hardly-unexpected sequel to the blockbuster Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill saga; anyone who thinks this line-of-attack is 'principled' rather than purely political isn't paying attention).

Republican leadership needs to grow a pair, stand up and push back. The debate on John Bolton's qualifications for ambassador to the UN was last week. Ample opportunity was provided to Democrat and Republican alike to express their legitimate concerns about him. It was agreed that the committee vote would occur this week. Stop the shenanigans and do your damn jobs!

UPDATE: Lileks goes off on the Senate: I’m starting to suspect that the entire Senate should be abolished. Purge the lot of ‘em. Their drivel may be no less meretricious than their House counterparts, but it’s usually slathered with sanctimony about the Noble Nature of their particular chamber, how they’re the saucer into which passions are poured to cool. (By “cool,” they often mean “frozen to the consistency of a glacier layer laid down when the Bourbons were still a going concern.”) Such airs! They’re the only branch of government that regularly advertises its special nature and higher purpose – it’s like having a special branch of the Kiwanis made up entirely of bankers who announce, before each meeting, that they’re better than the realtors and insurance salesmen. And why? Because there are fewer of them. Well, there are fewer experts in quantum physics than there are Special Forces soldiers, but I know who I’d want to drop at night into a warzone.

Meaning, uh, what? Oh, nothing. And yes, I know that the genius and virtue of the Senate is the way in which it makes Rhode Island equal to California, so the Big and Strong cannot roll over the Small, at least not until they’ve promised the Small they’ll vote for Maple Syrup price supports in the next session. But the Senate, as currently composed, seems to attract people who have that potent & fatal combination of dimness and self-regard, and when you elevate those sorts to the Great National Saucer, you get idiocies like the Bolton hearing. On one side, a charmless babbler like Joe Biden, whose instinct upon finding a bad metaphor is to attenuate it until it is three microns wide; on the other side, George Voinovich, who finally showed up for a hearing and pronounced himself Disturbed by the allegations. This is like a guy skipping class on the origins WW2 for a month then raising his hand to ask why they haven’t covered how this Hitler fellow came to power.

You can find more on the Troubling Allegations here, at the Corner, which took the trouble to make some phone calls. (Scroll down; look for Rich Lowry’s remarks.)

I am not impressed by those who want to shiv Bolton to collect a scalp, but that’s their job; I do not understand the useful idiots on the Republican side who want to hand them the knife. (“It’s all sharp the way you like it! Can I come to your party now? I’ll help with the dip and everything.”) I don’t have to like Bolton, and I certainly don’t approve of his moustache, but I want someone who will stand up to the UN. And by “stand up” I don’t mean the cut-rate back-alley hooker method of leaning against a brick wall and hiking up the skirts. I mean, someone who doesn’t give the Syrian ambassador the old collegial nod in the break room or say “How’s it goin’” to the Zimbabwe attaché when you’re standing at adjoining urinals, and consider it a promising diplomatic overture.

There are good & decent people of either party, but they would be more impressive if they took big hard whacks at their colleagues, in public, without fear of seeming “unsenatorial.” If this goes on, “Senatorial” is the last thing they’ll want to be, because the word will by a synonym for blind preening egotism matched only by mulish cluelessness.

If only I could write so well, I'd be...well, a writer. Frankly, they deserve every word.