Who raised these questions in the Republican senator's mind? The provocateurs were Democrats on the committee, particularly Sen. Christopher Dodd and Sen. Joseph Biden. Now what do we know about these two? Biden was forced out of the 1988 race for the Democratic presidential nomination when he oafishly attempted to claim parts of a speech by British Labour Party Leader Neil Kinnock as his own. That is called plagiarism, and in the ensuing controversy it was discovered that this was not the first time Biden had pilfered lines from others. He even did it in law school. Moreover, he is an artless blowhard. Many claims he has made for himself turn out to be untrue.
Dodd is an old drinking buddy of Sen. Edward Kennedy's who publicly renounced his drinking sprees and girl-hopping some years ago. So now, he is a moral paragon. In the hearings over Bolton, he unveiled charts that purported to show how the Undersecretary of State had tried to dismiss subordinates in the State Department. Exclaimed the reformed boozer and Casanova: "This ought to be indictable." Sen. Boxer, I believe we have another candidate for "anger management lessons."
The Democratic Party today has no alternatives to the Republicans in terms of policy. This is not the party that once offered America a New Deal or a New Frontier domestically and "internationalism" then "containment" as a foreign policy. It is a party bankrupt of ideas and of policy. In foreign policy, its great promise is to throw in with the United Nations, an institution now proven to be corrupt, ineffectual, anti-Semitic and anti-American. Bolton is a staunch critic of the UN's backward ways, and so the Democrats think they will distinguish themselves by thwarting his nomination.
Yet they have given up on taking issue with Bolton in the realm of ideas. Instead, they indulge in character assassination. It is despicable. It is what another of their moral paragons is given to calling "the politics of personal destruction." That they have to resort to such ridiculous figures as Dodd, Biden and, alas, the psychotherapist Boxer as their assassins is more evidence of the mess they are in. Not only are they a party without ideas, they are a party without leaders of integrity. One hopes that Voinovich will discover this over the next three weeks as he conscientiously reviews Bolton's record. And one hopes the other Republicans will take heart and recognize that a governing party has to fight for its own when they are under fire. Otherwise, they will be dependent on the goodwill of their enemies.