John Bolton, tough former US Ambassador to UN, testing waters for 2012 run.

By Verne Strickland 

Blogmaster USA DOT COM

May 20, 2011

There have been few Americans in the political arena more polarizing than Jesse Helms and John Bolton. 

That is, unless you’re willing to go to the far side of the aisle to include serial lefties like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, Charlie Rangel, Joseph Stalin, and – perhaps my favorite – Barack Obama. 

But my mission here is to talk about – and praise – the rock-ribbed Americanism of John Bolton, protégé of the late U.S. Senator Helms of North Carolina, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and surrogate conscience of the so-called “United Nations”.

Jesse was derisively – and affectionately – known as "Senator No". He single-handedly trash-canned more hare-brained anti-American bills than a shredder in the basement of the U.S. Capitol. He drove them crazy. 

Well, while John Bolton has never been a household name in the same league with Helms, his pedigree has always been close enough to satisfy me.

Bolton really blew off the lid on the world stage when he was appointed in 2005 as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., a bully pulpit from which he boldly bashed every phony, deceitful, demagogic position the sketchy world body ever took. 

Now, he hints that he is considering lobbing his fedora into the ring for a run at the White House in 2012. He has a lot of work to do on that, but he’s accustomed to going up against the odds. Who knows?

But what do we know of this irrepressible bull in the U.N. china shop – Mr. John Bolton? For some, who may agree with him and not know it – much too little. For others, who hate him without fully understanding why – way too much.

Allow me to offer just a few things I have known about him, and others I have gleaned from arduous research. Whoever you are, whatever you believe, you will not come up neutral.

One problem. There’s way too much information here to stuff into one article. This can happen when a writer can’t summon the courage to pare down a treasure trove of facts too good to ignore.

That writer turns out a series. So I am going to produce a series on John Bolton, potential candidate for our nation’s highest and most prestigious office – Dean of the Political Science Department at Harvard University.

Strike that. Bolton, in truth, cannot even get a phone call through to Harvard, Stanford, UNC, Brown, Blue, or any of the many stuffy, effete scholastic bastions of socialism we sometimes call “universities”. Yale is probably an exception, since he took a couple of hefty degrees out of there.

As I sort through the wheat and the chaff about Bolton, I am impressed more by what his detractors say about him than by what his ardent supporters pony up. Strange, you may say – but definitely true.

Anyway, as an introduction to Bolton 101, I am first going to present a few choice Boltonisms assembled by one of my favorite political writers -- Mark Steyn.

What I love about Bolton, America's new ambassador to the UN, is the sheer volume of "damaging" material.

 Usually, the Democrats and media have to riffle through decades of dreary platitudes to come up with one potentially exploitable infelicitous soundbite.

But with Bolton the damaging quotes are hanging off the trees and dropping straight into your bucket.

Five minutes' casual mooching through the back catalog and your cup runneth over. To wit:

The U.N.? ''There is no such thing as the United Nations.''

Reform of the Security Council? ''If I were redoing the Security Council, I'd have one permanent member -- the United States.'

International law? "It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law."

Offering incentives to rogue states? "I don't do carrots."

But he does do schtick. I happen to agree with all the above statements, but I can see why the international community might be minded to throw its hands up and shriek, "Quel horreur!"

Sending Bolton to be U.N. ambassador, then, says Steyn, “is like . . . putting Sudan and Zimbabwe on the Human Rights Commission. Or sending a bunch of child-sex fiends to man U.N. operations in the Congo. And the Central African Republic. And Sierra Leone, and Burundi, Liberia, Haiti, Kosovo, and pretty much everywhere else.”

VS: Here’s some of the street cred on Mr. Bolton: He was born in Baltimore on November 20, 1948. 

Many would say that Bolton is no gentlemen, but it cannot be denied that he is a scholar. He graduated with a B.A., summa cum laude, from Yale University and received his J.D. from Yale Law School. 

John Bolton has spent many years of his career in public service. Previous positions he has held are Assistant Secretary for International Organization Affairs at the Department of State, 1989-1993; Assistant Attorney General, Department of Justice, 1985-1989; Assistant Administrator for Program and Policy Coordination, U.S. Agency for International Development, 1982-1983; General Counsel, U.S. Agency for International Development, 1981-1982.

Bolton is an attorney who held two assistant attorney general positions in the Reagan administration's Justice Department and was assistant secretary of state for international organizations in the first Bush administration, enjoyed the staunch support of the committee's chairman, Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C.

Helms called Bolton "a treasured friend" and repeated his earlier encomium that "John Bolton is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon."

Said Helms: "John is a patriot. He is a brilliant thinker and writer. And, most importantly, he is a man with the courage of his convictions. John says what he means and means what he says. And that is precisely what is needed at the State Department and elsewhere in the government." 

 Implacably loyal to the United States of America, from whence he came, John Bolton was and is a paragon of American virtue and nationalism. 

 

Though he offended many – chiefly stiff-backed U.S. liberals and elitist Europeans – he has friends and admirers who see in him a refreshing candor and an unabashed American spirit which bows no knee to those who strut about with an Old World air of superiority. 

Let's give him a chance. 

This is our first in a series of posts on Ambassador John Bolton, who has expressed his interest in a run for the Presidency in 2012. To learn more about this patriotic defender of America, watch for our second installment soon.