Chris Matthews on Bolton "not really being able to do the job"

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5445086/

You have a contradiction here. Here we are at war over extending democracy in the world. What we’re trying to sell in Iraq is consensus, consensus among the warring factions and democratic systems. Yet, here we have someone going to the United Nations to make that case, who didn’t pass muster with the opposition in the U.S. Senate, who wasn’t accepted by Condoleezza Rice as her number two person at state and who clearly isn’t a consensus type individual. It is a contradiction, but that said, he’s the President’s man, he’s the Vice-President’s man, and he definitely shares the type of thinking that took U.S. into the war in Iraq. He is the man who emblemizes the war in Iraq better than anyone could.

I’m not sure if any of us in journalism know how he got picked. He doesn’t seem to be the logical candidate. He’s not a charmer. He’s not a diplomat, either by profession or temperament. He’s a hard-line hawk. He is a man involved in arms control. That puts him right on the cutting edge of the reason we went to war, a nuclear threat from Iraq. He is hardly a consensus candidate. It’s not clear how the President came to this decision, he may have taken the advice and consent not of the Senate, but of Vice-President Dick Chaney.

Well, all Presidents make recess appointments. Clinton did it when he put an African-American into a Fourth Circuit Court appointment. An appointment that Clinton definitely wanted filled by an African American. So it’s not extraordinary. In this case we’re picking someone for the title. Catch the job description, “permanent representative to the United Nations from America”. Well, he’s only going to serve in this case for a little more than a year, he’s certainly more like a temp than a permanent representative, It’s an appointment that can’t be re-upped. He can only serve until the beginning of the next session of Congress so it certainly puts him in a position of not really being able to do the job. For better or worse he’s a good representative of the thinking of this administration in terms of foreign policy. He is not, however, a consensus builder, that’s going to be clear.

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[warrens]

1. He's in for 18 months of being openly mocked

Nobody is going to take a word he says seriously, particularly knowing that a year from January, he'll be history. If the thought we had too little influence in the U.N. given that we are the only superpower at the moment, wait til he sees what his presence will do. This should be entertaining.

[Poiuyt]

2. Bolton looks like he has eyes on Condi

He should be careful with her husband right there.

[Toots]

3. He is there for one purpose and one purpose only.... INTIMIDATION

He is the bullies bully. He has one major asset, he is great at intimidation. That is how they plan to "Reform" the UN. INTIMIDATION INTIMIDATION INTIMIDATION

[Clark2008]

4. Obviously, Shrub still hasn't learned a thing about dealing

with foreign countries.

There are some countries out there who eat intimidation for breakfast.

[Goldmund]

5. There are other people who can intimidate.

It didn't have to be Bolton if that's the only purpose.

The more I think about it, the more I conclude that the only real possibility is that either a) Bolton has the goods on Dubya and this is some kind of a deal between them or, more likely, b) Bolton is in on some conspiracy that only a few people know about.

[wake.up.america]

7. The Russians, the Chinese and others will not take kindly...

to Revolting throwing his weight around.

[gratuitous]

6. Notice the "Clinton did it"

Which is supposed to make the obscenity of Bolton's recess appointment somehow palatable. What Tweety fails to mention (and I wonder why) is that the African-American (what, Tweety couldn't find the name Roger Gregory?) Clinton appointed to the Fourth Circuit was eminently qualified to be an appellate court judge, had years of experience as a lawyer and a federal judge, and whose nomination was being held up for the simple reason of racism. Jesse Helms had prevented Gregory from even getting a hearing before the Judiciary Committee, let alone the now-sacrosanct up-or-down vote so important (now) to the GOP.

Before Gregory's appointment, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals had an all-white panel of judges -- in fact, no black man or woman had ever served as a judge on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. For a judicial circuit that covers the states of Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, it's pretty odd that no African-American defendant would ever have a chance of having his appeal heard by someone of his own ethnic background.

Gregory had been endorsed by both the Democratic (Robb) and Republican (Warner) Senators from Virginia, but it was Helms' obstinate opposition that denied him a seat on the federal bench. Helms went so far as to say that the people of North Carolina didn't care who was on the Fourth Circuit bench, that it was a picayune detail that mattered only to lawyers and newpaper editors. Helms made his delusional comments at a time when four of the 15 seats on the Fourth Circuit were vacant, and the seat that Gregory was appointed to fill had been vacant for over 10 years, a circumstance that had been called a "judicial emergency" by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.

Compare and contrast the entirety of the respective records of Bolton and the unnamed Roger Gregory, and Tweety's lame attempt at parallelism between Bush and Clinton crumbles like a sand castle at high tide.

You should be ashamed of yourself, Chris Matthews.