Thanks
Posted on 08/02/2005 11:33:38 PM PDT by Natty Bumppo@frontier.net
Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!
My Two Cents on the Bolton Appointment
By David J. Aland [1 August 2005]
Through the mid-Sixties, a very popular television comedy featuring the actor/singer Jim Nabors held sway: Gomer Pyle, USMC. A spin-off from The Andy Griffiths Show, it portrayed a somewhat dim but genial backwoods gas-station attendant who had joined the Marines, and weekly embroiled his platoon in various misadventures. His trademark line “Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!”, usually uttered in the least surprising situations, became a slang fad for awhile, a sarcastic headliner for those blinding flashes of the obvious.
Today, surprising absolutely no-one, President Bush made a recess appointment of John Bolton to the UN ambassadorship. It is an appointment the President has long made clear he intended to complete. The White House even floated trial balloons about it last week. The move is by no means unexpected, but the Democratic doges quickly lined up today to wave their hands and shout “Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!”
John Bolton’s appointment has been the center of parliamentary wrangling in the Senate for almost half a year. Criticized as having a bad temper and browbeating people who disagree with him, his nomination has been held, deferred, put on hold, and filibustered variously since just after the President’s second Inauguration. Maneuvering around the clear majority of the Senate that would approve to confirm his appointment, the Senate Gomers sought to kill the appointment in Committee, then stall it indefinitely on the floor by imposing the requirement for a super-majority needed to break the filibuster.
All the while, the UN has been reeling from one scandal to the next with no representative from the United States to influence affairs. The Oil for Food program was revealed to be a massive kickback operation, lining the pockets of French and Russian oligarchs who, not surprisingly, opposed our intervention in Iraq. The peacekeeping forces have been uncovered operating sex rings and engaging in systematic human rights violations. The son of the Secretary General has been trading on his father’s influence.
Meanwhile, the UN has bottomed out. While criticizing the U. S., the UN took almost three weeks to get to tsunami-stricken South Asia, where the U. S. had been since the disaster. Essential silent regarding the ongoing calamity in Darfur, the UN spent its time re-arranging the deck furniture of committee leadership and internal appointments, creating alignments that would be comical were they not so chilling, such as having Sudan and Zimbabwe on the Human Rights Commission.
Strangely, the Gomers seem to believe that having no one at the UN is better than someone they don’t like. Certainly, anyone who shares the least bit of the President’s foreign policy opinions would have been unacceptable to these Senators, but they have not had the courage to oppose Bolton on these grounds. Instead, they have nattered about his management style and made snide comments about his personal style. It seemed only a matter of time before Robin Ghivan and Tom Shales of the Washington Post reviewed his couture and television skills.
Now, however, it’s a different story. The recess appointment has “weakened” our position at the UN, according to Senator Harry Reid. Senator Christopher Dodd bewails the loss of “credibility” with the UN, while Senator Kennedy says it “darkens the cloud over Mr Bolton’s credibility.”
Since when does a lack of support from a minority in the Senate constitute a loss of international credibility? Kofi Annan actually got it right today when he commented that the manner of Bolton’s appointment was “the President’s prerogative,” a Constitutional point that the Democrats seem to have forgotten.
Also apparently forgotten are the three dozen recess appointments made by President Clinton, including an ambassador whose sexual orientation was a slap in the face to his host country. But that kind of precedent does not make recess appointments a bad thing – President Kennedy appointed Thurgood Marshall during recess, and Eisenhower appointed both Earl Warren and William Brennan during recess.
The President makes policy and appointments, and the Senate advises. The ambassador’s credibility is tied to the President, not the Senate. There is no doubt that the President’s voice will be heard at the Security Council now, and not the clamor of the Senate. That’s the way our Constitution set it up.
Surprise, surprise, surprise…
David J. Aland is a retired Naval Officer with a graduate degree in National Security Affairs from the U. S. Naval War College.
The last paragraph says it all.
Works for me...........
An excellent article, IMO.
The President gave them a chance to do something useful, and when they couldn't figure that out, he had to go on ahead without them. He can't be holding their hands all their lives; they have to learn how to do things for themselves. Fortunately, he didn't need their "help" after all.
Bump for Bumppo
Instead of "surprise, surprise, surprise" they should have shouted "CITIZENS ARRRRAYEST, CITIZENS ARRRRAYEST!!!"
Thanks
That line became a slang fad for AWHILE? Forty years later, people still know "surprise surprise surprise"! (Am thrilled with Bolton going to the UN - the surprise will be on the Libs when they see how effective he's going to be)
Shazam!
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