Oh, sorry -- I guess I'm supposed to be angry about the Bolton recess appointment.

It just doesn't seem worth the bother, though. Decisions in the Bush administration are made by roughly seven or eight people, not all of whom are even on the government payroll (I'd say the list is Cheney and Rove, Grover Norquist and James Dobson, plus, to a limited extent, Rice and Rumsfeld, along with, yes, Bush himself, shooting from the hip.) These people decide everything; everyone else who seems to be part of the decision-making process is really just a clerk. The administration's ambassador to the United Nations is, was, and always will be Dick Cheney, along with his staff and, inevitably, Rove (who clearly decided the timing of the 9/12/02 Bush UN speech on Iraq).

Any substitute for Bolton will follow precisely the same policies Bolton will; I'd say that "the alternative to Bolton is another Bolton," but as we've learned from the John Roberts appointment, the alternative to Bolton could be a Bolton who carries himself like a 50s-sitcom dad but is, nonetheless, a zealot. Would someone like that, someone hard to attack because the public thinks he or she is nice, be an improvement?

The Democrats have done pretty well on a couple of issues in the second Bush term, but they still don't know how to make voters angry about a person. Ideally, if you want to render an administration figure or appointee utterly objectionable to large swaths of the public who didn't start out on your side, you've got to keep the message simple. In fact, you should be able to boil it down to two words. Nanny Problem. Quota Queen. Slick Willie. The Democrats don't know how to do that, can't even pull it off with someone like Bolton, so what the hell -- bring him on. He represents this administration perfectly, and in the not-too-distant future, when he gives his time in office the extra Bolton twist, shooting his mouth off or maybe spitting on the carpet as the French ambassador walks by while cameras record the expectoration, Democrats can say, "We told you so."