The Dem sneer and jeer

Rich Lowry:

Whatever else you think of him, John Bolton is a serious person. Democrats could have acted on their disagreements with President Bush’s pick to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations by making Bolton’s confirmation battle a discussion of, among other things, his well-formed views on enforcement of the Biological Weapons Convention, or the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, or the International Criminal Court. Instead, they have gone after him with innuendo and misrepresentations.

Leading the way has been Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking minority member Joseph Biden, one of the Senate’s foremost authorities on taking himself seriously. He has been willing to shred his own credibility in taking the ax to Bolton. Consider his bad faith on procedural matters: Biden had assured Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar two weeks ago that if Bolton’s hearing was delayed a week for Pope John Paul II’s funeral, both the hearing and the committee vote would take place last week. But when it came time to vote last week, Democrats objected. When it came time to vote again this Tuesday, Democrats objected again, forcing Republicans to take extraordinary steps to even allow the committee to convene. When it did, Democrats caterwauled for an hour until Ohio Republican George Voinovich buckled and supported another three-week delay on the vote.

This gives Democrats more time to smear and jeer. On Tuesday, Connecticut Democrat Chris Dodd said of Bolton’s conduct in a routine bureaucratic dispute a few years ago, “This ought to be indictable.” How ridiculous. Can we make senatorial hyperbole a federal offense? Biden at one point asked for a private hearing to air the allegations in a letter from a woman who said Bolton was abusive of her. Biden said he didn’t want to harm Bolton’s reputation — but according to the New York Sun, Biden’s staff had already e-mailed the letter to journalists days earlier.

The main charges against Bolton are de minimis....

...

As the Bolton-nomination fight drags on, even more criticisms of him will surface from the State Department. Bolton vigorously supported Bush’s foreign policy at the incorrigibly weak-kneed department, earning him the enmity of its bureaucrats and their former servant Colin Powell, who appears to be feeding some of the anti-Bolton attacks. And the Democrats are willing to float any trash they are given — anything, anything to avoid discussing the substance of Bolton’s views.


The Democrat's bad conduct in this affair should not be rewarded. Voinovich should be ashamed of himself. Biden and Dodd have no shame sothat would be too much to ask of them.

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