Mr. Bolton Resigns
EDITORIAL, NYTimes on
the Web, December 5, 2006
John Bolton’s decision to resign as
America’s envoy to the United Nations was a wise move. He averted a
distracting and divisive fight at a time when both Congress and the Bush
administration have better things to do. He has also provided President
Bush with an opportunity to show the kind of bipartisan leadership he talks
about so frequently and exercises so seldom.
This page opposed Mr. Bolton’s nomination in the first place, arguing that at
the very minimum, an ambassador to the United Nations should be someone who
believed the organization deserved to exist. Mr. Bolton has always been
hostile to the U.N., and to the whole spirit of consensus-seeking diplomacy it
embodies. When Democrats and moderate Republicans kept the nomination tied
up in the Senate, Mr. Bush characteristically insisted on having his own way by
giving Mr. Bolton an interim appointment while Congress was out of session.
But the interim appointment was about to expire, and the battle would have had
to begin all over again once the new Congress arrived. Attempts to get the
lame duck Senate to confirm Mr. Bolton ran aground when Lincoln Chafee, the
Republican senator from Rhode Island, refused to support the nomination in the
Foreign Relations Committee, leaving Mr. Bolton’s fate hung up on a tie vote.
Mr. Chafee is the prime example of a moderate Republican who was popular with
his constituents but who lost his seat because of Mr. Bush’s hard-edge
partisanship and insistence on having his own way in Iraq. The White House
was left contemplating schemes to keep Mr. Bolton at work without Senate
confirmation — like making him deputy ambassador and leaving the top job
unfilled.
The United Nations doesn’t need any further proof of how little the Bush
administration thinks of it. And the Bush administration doesn’t need to
insult the world at a time when it is becoming increasingly clear how much help
the United States needs to stabilize Afghanistan, extricate itself from Iraq,
and curb the nuclear appetites of North Korea and Iran. Mr. Bolton’s
withdrawal gives the president a chance to improve his relationship with both
the U.N. and Congress. There are plenty of experienced, internationalist
Republicans who could get near-unanimous support in the Senate and send a signal
to the world that Mr. Bush understands that the United States is not the only
nation on the planet whose opinion matters.
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