Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Republican successes are punished unremittingly by partisan Democrats. If one reads just the Connecticut press, and nothing else, one must suppose that U.S. delegate to the United Nations John Bolton was a failure during his short term in the UN. That is not true. As Robert Novak notes in a column on U.S. Senator Chris Dodd and Bolton. And, of course, Dodd supported those who refused to bring to a floor vote Bolton's nomination to the post, congress' way of executing the prisoner and then washing one's hands of the business, the coward's way out. Some responsible journalists, David Lightman of the Hartford Courant among them, continue to refer to Dodd as a senator who rarely opposes presidential nominees. Dodd now has at least two notches on his pistol – representing Reich and Bolton – and one wonders how many more Bush nominees Dodd must successfully run out of Dodge before reporters stop referring to him as one who generally believes that presidents should have the o...

U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd has vigorously opposed the nomination of John Bolton as a United States U.N. delegate. This is not the first time Dodd has opposed Bolton, a friend of liberty, and a vigorous critic of Fidel Castro, Kim Jong Il and other dictators. Bolton’s critique of the Cuban and Korean dictators has been unsparing, truthful and very undiplomatic. A diplomat is supposed to be someone whose iron fist is sheathed by a velvet glove. Bolton, some of his critics assert, conceals his iron fist in a mailed glove. Someone once suggested that the United States might want to offer a carrot to North Korea from time to time, in addition to beating it with a big stick, to which Bolton replied, “I don’t do carrots.” That blunt talk, Trumanesque in its inspiration, frightens the Dickens out of Dodd and others, who believe that the velvet glove of the diplomat should conceal a velvet fist. In selecting Bolton as a UN delegate, Dodd said, Bush had made a poor choice. His opposition to Bolton has...