Mark Leon Goldberg, from the United Nations Foundation, writes in the American Prospect that UN Ambassador John Bolton faces an uphill struggle in his bid to win Senate confirmation.
Goldberg recycles the tired meme that, "Should Bolton fail to secure the requisite votes to overcome closure [sic, cloture], he could still accept a second recess appointment. But ... his credibility as U.S. ambassador would be genuinely crippled."
This is silliness. The argument was nonsense when it was made during Bolton's initial confirmation hearings, and it is no more correct now. Whether Bolton receives Senate confirmation is irrelevant to his "legitimacy" at the UN.
Think about it: Most UN member states don't believe in such quaint things as elected legislatures, and so aren't about to treat Bolton as least among equals because he was filibustered in the Senate. Furthermore, even those countries which are liberal democracies (such as the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia) don't subject international diplomats to parliamentary veto.
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