So. Once again, Mark Shmitt over at The Decembrist has an excellent post, this time on the hoo-hah in today’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee committee meeting. For those not paying attention, instead of passing on the nomination of John Bolton (for Ambassador to the United Nations) to the full floor on a party line vote, the vote was delayed when Sen. Voinovich expressed ... caution.
Now, I’m of two minds about this. Well, three. First of all, I continue to support the idea that the President is entitled to a Cabinet that supports his policies, and (for the most part) Ambassadors of his choosing. If the only reason to deny confirmation is that the candidate agrees with the President, the candidate should be confirmed, even if the Senate does not agree with the President. If, as has happened recently, the candidate has spoken the real but unstated policies of the President, the candidate should be carefully questioned to ensure that the unstated policies get stated, and make it clear whether they are supported by the President or not. I should add, by the way, that the candidate really should only be responsible for those policies that come under the bailiwick of the position; a nominee for Ambassador to the UN should be responsible for defending past statements about, oh, the UN, international diplomacy, and international cooperation, but not necessarily for defending past policy statements about, oh, Social Security, or campaign finance reform, or the filibuster. In this case, I think it's clear that Mr. Bolton supports the administration, and represents their appalling and dangerous views clearly and with understanding.
On the other hand, I do think that issues of temperament and management style are relevant, and there is a distressing tendency to appoint people whose belligerent and abrasive style I find abhorrent. In particular, of course, there is an accusation that he mistreated a woman in his employ, and in a totally unrelated note, I see that Robert Blackwill is now a lobbyist for Taiwan. How's that for paralipsis. From what I understand about him, I find it hard to believe that Mr. Bolton would be persuasive at the UN.
On another hand, it’s clear that what I think of as the job of the diplomat (I almost wrote diplomatist, which goes to show) has little to do with diplomacy as the current administration understands it. For the most part, Mr. Bolton’s job will simply be to lay down the policy the US intends to follow, and make it clear that there will be no changes. If there is negotiation, presumably it would simply be haggling over the size of the bribes, and whether they will come in the form of F-16s or tariff protection, or in some more sweetly personal form. Mr. Bolton may not be the best person for those negotiations, but then (a) there is little reason to believe he will engage in them himself, and (2) there isn’t much reason to believe that the administration will honor its commitments in those regards, so there’s no particular advantage to getting the lowest price. So, despite what appear to me to be drawbacks, perhaps Mr. Bolton is in fact qualified, not for what the job used to be, but for what it will be in the next four years, whoever fills it.
On yet another hand, it’s clear to me that defeating this nomination will be good for the Democratic Party, or more accurately, bad for the Republican Party. If Sen. Voinovich can get away with expressing caution at this time, then who knows who might express caution next month, and on what issue? And after caution, perhaps disagreement, perhaps skepticism, perhaps even open acknowledgement of betrayal. Well, let’s not get crazy. Still, caution.
I will add, if I can gesture with my remaining hands, that should the nomination of Mr. Bolton fail to be confirmed, the Democratic Party should present that failure as a failure of the administration’s policies, rather than as a failure of the vetting process. I think (still) that the frame we want to hang around this administration and its cronies is that of an arrogant and elitist cabal of secretive incompetents, who have betrayed their own party, and its rank and file in the country. Hey, it fits!
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
And after caution, perhaps disagreement, perhaps skepticism, perhaps even open acknowledgement of betrayal.
Some people might take issue with that progression. They might suggest that it plays into the hands of the intolerant to equate disagreement with betrayal.
Some might find it interesting to imagine an administration which welcomes a variety of opinions, open debate, and reasoned decision-making. They might opine that an administration should be concerned with the opinions of others, they might view the free expression of dissenting opinions as a sign of respect for and participation in the democratic process, and they might believe that our nation is healthier as a result of wider participation.
Attempting to understand such people is a betrayal of America, of course. Remember, every ounce of democracy that we keep at home is an ounce that we cannot export to the rest of the world.
I don’t think OHB meant the progression (caution, perhaps disagreement, perhaps skepticism, perhaps even open acknowledgement of betrayal) to be things that are equivalent, or a natural progression in terms of offenses. I think he meant it to be a progression of the kinds of responses to the White House by Republicans who aren’t in the White House that could become progressively more politically acceptable.
It’s one thing for the party in power to dimiss the views of the opposition. But I think it’s correct that the Administration is betraying fundamental Republican values, too.
Um, yes, what Jacob said. I was wondering if some Republicans managed to express disagreement with the Administration without political defenestration, and then some managed to express a sense that not everything said by Our Only President and his cabal of incompetence is true even by the evidentiary standards they hold, then perhaps some Republican might acknowledge that they were betrayed by this administration and by their leadership in the House and Senate. Which seems to me to be the case; poor Lincoln Chafee had, I’m told, the look of a man who just discovered that he sold his inheritance for a mess of pottage.
Thanks,
-V.
Ah, I had indeed read betrayal with an inverted subject and object (or inverted agent and experiencer in theta-role terms). With news coverage about the White House feeling betrayed by the Republicans on the committee, I made an assumption. Which, as we all know, makes an umpt out of ass and ion.
Quite reasonable, and since the cover story of this week’s Time Magazine is about the popularizer of the term “treason” to apply to dissent of various kinds, the discussion of ‘betrayal’ is worth having anyway.
Thanks,
-V.
every ounce of democracy that we keep at home is an ounce that we cannot export to the rest of the world.
it may be more accurate to say that every ounce we use at home is an ounce that cannot be applied to reducing the unit cost of democracy intended for export.
the difficulty – not insurmountable, but certainly dominating – of encouraging people to buy american democracy, rather than to grow their own or to buy inexpensive foreign knock-offs, is a matter of keeping our costs of production as low as possible.
as we have not yet developed a way to globalize production of democracy (for instance, the application of european democracy in africa does not generally grow the market for our second-tier services), the only way to keep our costs low is to keep our domestic democratic product out of circulation, so that it is always on hand for ongoing research, leading to great innovations in reducing the cost:democracy ratio.
our goal in general should be restated as one of “making the world safe for quality democracy at a reasonable price.”
i misspoke. when speaking of globalization of the democracy manufacture, it would be more proper to identify segments of the democracy production chain that could be completed at lower cost by foreign participants.
our failure in this is twofold. first, we have not yet found manufacturing partners who are not also interested in developing their own capacity for designing democracy. i believe we cannot as a nation or as a champion of liberty afford to let slip our trade secrets. whether it be for domestic use, eliminating the possibility of our future penetration of their market, or for export, with obvious results for our own export business, the overall economies of scale possible through centralized manufacture and distribution of democracy would be greatly endangered.
the second disappointing result is that we have failed to develop good FDZs within our existing partner countries that do not inevitably lead to the radical nationalization of our wholly-owned democracy factories within the zone. democracy remains a product that cannot be reliably produced anywhere near its intended market.