Senate Doesn’t End Debate on Bolton Nomination

The US Senate voted to end debate on the John Bolton nomination to be the next US ambassador to the UN; the final tally was 56-42 to move on with the vote to confirm. Unfortunately for Mr. Bolton and his backers, the Senate rules require 60 votes to end debate, and the Gang of 14 ensured earlier in the week that the rule would be unchanged even for judicial nominations. The GOP was quick to condemn “obstructionist” Democrats, but all the opposition claims to want are more records from the executive. Could inadequate information be grounds for not confirming?

The stakes are remarkably small for this nomination. With the current administration running the foreign policy of the US, it doesn’t matter who the US ambassador to the UN is. Although it is a high profile job (indeed, the only ambassadorship with cabinet rank), the ambassador is inevitably a mouthpiece for the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor and the President. Recall when the US was arguing before the Security Council in favor of making war on the Saddamite regime in Iraq; the slide show was given by Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, not ambassador John Negroponte (who has since moved on to be the US intelligence tsar).

This nomination, much like the judicial nominations that brought about the recent threat to the filibuster, is not about a single person getting a particular job. It is a struggle for power between the US Senate on the one hand, and those in the Republican Party who wish to advance the Bush agenda. Mr. Bush and his supporters have little interest in checks and balances that prevent the White House from getting its way, but there are those Republicans in the Senate who don’t like the idea of reducing their own power simply to get John Bolton a job in New York -- especially those who will remain in the Senate after 2008, when Mr. Bush will be out of the Oval Office, perhaps replaced by a Democrat.

The White House is maintaining that the Senate should end the debate it has going, which follows some rather testy testimony in confirmation hearings, and give the guy the job. The Democrats (and perhaps Republicans like Ohio’s John Voinovich) are demanding documents related to Syria and 10 communications intercepts the National Security Agency had that Mr. Bolton tried to get his hands on. The Bush team say that is a delaying tactic, but two Democrats, Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Joe Biden (D-DE) wrote in a letter to colleagues that the refusal to give over the documents, "is a threat to the Senate's constitutional power to advise and consent. The only way to protect that power is to continue to demand that the information be provided to the Senate.”

Quite likely, the documents have no real bearing on Mr. Bolton’s qualifications or lack thereof, but it is hard to see the harm in letting the Senate have them. If the White House were smart (in the sense of cunning, not in the sense of intellectually vibrant – that hope was dashed long ago), it would negotiate a deal whereby the Senate gets the documents, Dodd, Biden and Co. agree to end debate after an additional 8-12 hours, and then, Mr. Bolton takes Manhattan. Lately, Mr. Bush’s team has run into trouble because it is worrying more about how it wins rather than what it wins. The opportunity to change its tune is there, but will it be taken?



© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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