Senate GOP turns up heat over Bolton

WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans sought Tuesday to turn up the political heat on Democrats stalling the nomination of President Bush's choice to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

"It's been 200 days that this vacancy sign above our U.N. ambassador's door in New York has been blinking. It is now time to end that," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist told reporters.

The Tennessee Republican said he would schedule a vote at the end of the week to cut off debate on Bolton so that the Senate can hold a final up-or-down vote on Bolton's nomination.

However, it's not clear Frist has enough votes to end debate. Several Democrats would have to side with all Republicans to reach the 60 votes needed to go forward.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said that holding such a vote - even if it doesn't succeed - keeps the pressure on Democrats. "I don't want people to have the impression that we just dropped the Bolton vote," he said.

Democrats complain that the administration has refused to give them access to information they need to make informed decisions on whether Bolton is the right man for the job.

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., and Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., have sought access to the names of the U.S. officials mentioned in 10 communications intercepted by the National Security Agency and requested by Bolton.

Last week, the Democrats said they want National Intelligence Director John D. Negroponte to check their list of three dozen "names of concern" with the names of U.S. officials in the secret communications Bolton sought.

On Tuesday, GOP Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a letter to Dodd and Biden that he would not recommend the proposal to Negroponte in its current form, but would consider a narrower request with fewer names.

The Crying Game

What makes George Voinovich so contemptible? Michael Collins of the Scripps Howard News Service posed the question over the weekend, in an article amusingly titled "Scorn Over 'Buckeye Boo-Hoo' Mystifies Experts":

Ever since Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, got all weepy on the Senate floor a few weeks ago, he has been widely mocked by pundits, wags, bloggers, editorial writers and just about everybody else with a sense of emotional superiority. . . .

Although it's nothing new for politicians to become the laughingstock of an increasingly cynical public, even the experts are a little baffled by the outpouring of hostility directed at Voinovich's outpouring of emotion.

"We don't universally make fun of politicians when they cry--that's the interesting thing," said Randolph Cornelius, a Vassar College professor and researcher who has studied human emotions, and weeping in particular.

In some cases, in fact, letting the tears flow can enhance a politician's image. Think Rudolph Giuliani and 9/11. Giuliani's emotional, misty-eyed public appearances in the days after the terrorist attacks softened his brusque image as New York mayor and helped him build needed political capital, Cornelius said.

The difference, of course, is that tears were one appropriate response to the enormity of 9/11. Similarly, we saw a congressman on TV during the recent stem-cell debate who was in tears as he talked about the plight of cancer-stricken kids, which is indisputably sad.

Voinovich, by contrast, was blubbering because John Bolton, a man who is purported to be socially rough-edged, is about to become America's ambassador to the U.N. This is not something that would make a normal person weep. "If he cried every time he thought of a brusque federal official, Lake Erie couldn't hold all the tears," political scientist John Pitney tells Collins.

The emotional incongruity of Voinovich's response is enough to make him seem weird, but the contempt to which he has been subject is also owing to the way in which he came to oppose Bolton. At first he seemed totally indifferent to the question of who would be the U.N. ambassador, not even bothering to show up for the Bolton hearings. He finally appeared on the day the committee was to have voted on the nomination, listened to the Democrats ritually denounce Bolton, and then declared himself troubled, causing a delay in the vote.

When the time finally came to send Bolton's nomination to the floor, Voinovich declared that he had been persuaded Bolton was "the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be" and that he would oppose the nomination on the Senate floor--though it didn't become clear until later that he hoped to drown Bolton in his own tears.

What makes Voinovich's lachrymosity so ludicrous is its sincerity. Does Chris Dodd or Joe Biden or John Kerry or Barbara Boxer cry herself to sleep thinking about mean old John Bolton going to Turtle Bay? Not a chance. Their campaign against Bolton was totally cynical, motivated by a combination of ideology and partisanship. And Voinovich fell for it! Their phony sanctimony touched his heart and drove him to tears. His crying fit on the Senate floor was a display of weak-mindedness as well as emotional incontinence.

Or, to put it another way, the Democrats can't win elections or accomplish much of anything else--but damned if they can't make George Voinovich cry. Even an expert should understand why that makes him the most ridiculous man in politics today.

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