Does the Bolton imbroglio matter?

Seriously, is the choice of ambassador to the UN all that important? At the UN, ambassadors come and go. For the last few years, for example, a gentleman named John Negroponte has been our UN ambassador. Has anyone thought twice about him in all that time? But all of a sudden, purely because of the intense Democratic opposition to John Bolton for the same post, the question of whether Bolton gets approved or not is portrayed by Republicans as the Battle of the Bulge and Gettysburg rolled into one. If Bolton were rejected, and another nominee got the job instead, what difference would it make? The UN ambassador doesn’t make policy, he carries out the policy directives of his superiors in the White House and the State Department. It’s understandable that professional Republicans care intensely about whether their team is winning or not, but why should the rest of us?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 25, 2005 03:58 PM | Send