Well, they finally got him. John Bolton is out as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

National Review, The Wall Street Journal editorial page, and other conservative commentators have already listed some of the people who count this a victory: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.).

But they didn’t cause Bolton’s demise. No, this unhappy moment can be traced entirely to Republicans, who did not confirm Bolton when they had 55 votes in the Senate.

And why didn’t they? At this point it’s hard to remember the sheer silliness of some of the issues that in 2005 effectively killed the Bolton nomination. Now, in light of what has happened, it’s worth a look back.

There were two main charges against Bolton. The first was that he punished State Department analysts who wouldn’t manipulate intelligence to achieve goals he wanted.  And the second was that he was, in general, a bully.

The first would have been a serious issue, if true. But a close look at the evidence showed that the charges just didn’t stand up to scrutiny.

For example, Bolton was said to have tried to fire a man named Christian Westermann after a dispute about the wording of a speech. It’s true the two men had a disagreement, but the “tried to fire” accusation — the key charge — fell apart under scrutiny.

“Did Mr. Bolton at any time threaten your employment?” Senate committee lawyers asked Westermann.

“No,” Westermann answered.

In fact, Westermann wasn’t fired, wasn’t disciplined, and wasn’t reassigned. Still, committee lawyers tried to find out whether he was punished in some other way. “What was your rank in 2001?” they asked him.

“I was a GS-14,” Westermann answered. That’s the second-highest step on the federal pay scale.”

“You’re still a 14,” the questioner said. “Did you go up every step you were supposed to?”

“Yes, I received ‘outstandings’ on my performance reports.”

“Have you received any awards?”

“I’ve received numerous awards.”

Well, so much for that allegation.

As for the bully stuff, the key accusation came from a woman named Melody Townsel, who claimed she had a run-in with Bolton in Moscow in 1994, when she was a contract employee for the Agency for International Development and Bolton was a lawyer in private practice. 

In a letter to the committee, Townsel claimed Bolton chased her down the halls of a hotel, threw things at her, slipped threatening letters under her door, and “behav[ed] like a madman.”

It turns out that allegation didn’t stand up, either. A key official who was in Moscow wrote the committee that Townsel’s story was “impossible to square with fact.” 

“I certainly did not hear, contemporaneously, from any other employee in Moscow that anything occurred between Mr. Bolton and Ms. Townsel in Moscow,” the official said.

Even by Washington standards, those were pretty flimsy allegations. Nevertheless, on the basis of that impressively unimpressive evidence, Republican Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) announced he would oppose Bolton. Because of that, the committee sent the nomination to the full Senate with no endorsement. Once there, Democrats blocked Bolton’s confirmation. President Bush had to resort to a recess appointment to send Bolton to the U.N.

Once Bolton was in the job, the allegations that had seemed so critical during his non-confirmation process seemed completely unimportant.

Bolton did a good job representing U.S. interests on issues of enormous import: Iran, North Korea, the Middle East.

He did so well that by last summer Voinovich had changed his mind.

“I believe Bolton has been tempered and focused on speaking for the administration,” Voinovich wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Post. “He has stood many times side by side with his colleagues from Japan, Britain, Canada and other countries, showing a commitment to cooperation within the United Nations.”

If Bush re-nominated Bolton, Voinovich wrote, “I cannot imagine a worse message to send to the terrorists — and to other nations deciding whether to engage in this effort — than to drag out a possible re-nomination process or even replace the person our president has entrusted to lead our nation at the United Nations at a time when we are working on these historic objectives.”

Well, Bush did re-nominate Bolton, and for a moment, it seemed he would finally make it. But then soon-to-be-former Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) stepped in to stop Bolton.

That was the final straw. This week, Bolton gave up — and the message Voinovich feared would be sent to terrorists was indeed sent.

It is difficult to believe that an official as effective as Bolton could be felled by such baseless opposition, but it has happened.

And don’t blame Democrats. They were wrong to oppose the nomination, but they’re the opposition party. They opposed.

The truth is, the Bolton matter was an entirely Republican-made fiasco.

It could be the last one for a while, because starting next month, Republicans won’t have much power over the confirmation process. 

They should have done the right thing when they had the chance.

York is a White House correspondent for National Review. His column appears in The Hill each week.
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