The fourth-floor hearing room in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, where the Senate Foreign Relations Committee meets, is all shiny wood and heavy drapes. The ceiling is arched with recessed lighting, and along the paneled walls are eight-winged brass torches. There is little doubt that the debate that takes place there has profound implications for the United States and its role in the world.
So it was on Thursday, May 12, when the committee met to vote on the nomination of John R. Bolton, the current under secretary of state for arms control and international security, to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. The place was so packed that an overflow room opened down the hall. In the end, the outcome was what had been expected in the beginning: The Bolton nomination, controversial as it has been, went to the full Senate for its consideration on a party-line vote. But the hearing involved some detours that tell a larger story about the partisan state of play in Congress and about the country's hardening political divide.
First, there was the stunning few minutes when it seemed that Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) would torpedo the nomination by voting against it in committee. Voinovich was so scathing in his attacks on Bolton that the Democratic response was to simply agree with him and acknowledge that he had said it more eloquently than they would have.
“I have to say that, after pouring over hundreds of pages of testimony and speaking with many individuals, I believe that John Bolton would have been fired, fired, if he worked for a major corporation,” Voinovich said.
The two-term senator from Cleveland said he had come to the conclusion that Bolton was a sometimes bullying, rogue agent who needed to be kept in check: “Another reason I believe that Bolton is not the best man for the job is his tendency to act without regard for the views of others and without respect for the chain of command.”
If you did not know that a deal had been struck, you would have been convinced that Voinovich was going to kill the nomination by voting with the eight committee Democrats against Bolton to create a 9-9 tie that would have doomed Bolton. But after 15 minutes of laying out a case of why and how the United States needs to improve its diplomacy in the world -- and why Bolton is not the man for the job -- Voinovich turned back and descended the stairs, voting instead send Bolton to the full Senate without the customary favorable recommendation: “I am not so arrogant to think that I should impose my judgment and perspective of the U.S. position in the world community on the rest of my colleagues,” he said. “We owe it to the president to give Mr. Bolton an up or down vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate.”
And there it was: the power of the Bush presidency. George W. Bush has become the ultimate pivot point in American politics -- either you're with him or against him. Indeed, Bush may be able to avoid lame-duck status if he could stay embattled to the end, keeping his troops on high-alert.
Committee chair Dick Lugar, the usually mild-mannered Indiana Republican with a passion for nuclear disarmament, has not always seen eye to eye with Bolton on proliferation issues. But Lugar was one of the staunchest defenders of the nomination.
“If we reject Secretary Bolton without even granting him a vote on the Senate floor, President Bush's hand will be weakened at the U.N.,” Lugar said.
And he made a point being made repeatedly on the Hill, in the debates over Bolton, judicial nominations, and even Social Security: that Bush won the election, and to the victors go the spoils. “[T]he results of the 2004 election give the president the responsibility and the right to nominate like-minded representatives and to define who a like-minded representative is,” he said. And his spokesman, Andy Fisher, reiterated the GOP contention that the Democratic opposition to the Bolton nomination was evidence that opponents “saw this nomination as an opportunity to continue fighting the presidential campaign.”
Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN), who sits on the committee, said he believes that the clash over Bolton is in some ways a rehash of the last campaign; he added that Republicans need to stand up for Bush. “I think we have to defend the discretion and the judgment of the president to make that choice,” Coleman said before the Thursday vote.
It is a nearly impossible task to rise above partisanship these days. But Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) thought he might try to dislodge some to the GOP support for White House. Biden reminded the Republicans that he was chairman of the Judiciary Committee in 1993, when President Bill Clinton's first two choices for attorney general died in committee, largely at the hands of Democratic senators. And he tried to appeal to the independence of each senator: “I do not work for the president of the United States. None of you work for the president of the United States,” he said. Later he was forced to acknowledge what he was up against. “I have listened to the other side … and it comes down to one really compelling argument. The president is entitled to his man. I respect that. I disagree with it, but I respect that.”
The Bolton nomination goes to a full Senate preparing for an all-out war on judicial nominations, with both sides arguing about the partisan nature of the battle and about how the president and his nominees are treated: “There is a reason George W. Bush was elected to serve as president of the United States,” Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) said on Thursday. “It's because the majority of Americans trusted him to nominate judges.”
DeMint blamed Democratic partisanship for prevent him from voting on the Bush nominees. Biden tried to move past the partisan issue by acknowledging it: “Let's say that every one of us here is being totally partisan, it doesn't undercut a single thing we're saying. Sometimes even when you're being partisan, you're right.”
But that's a tough bag of peanuts to sell when you don't have the votes.
Terence Samuel is the chief congressional correspondent for U.S. News & World Report. His column about politics appears each week in the Prospect's online edition.
