Pity Rhode Island.(John Bolton and ambassadorship)

NEW YORK, APRIL 12

WHAT is a sophisticated position on the United Nations? As the old saw goes, I'm glad you asked that question. I say that having served in the U.N. as a Public Member of the U.S. delegation, and written a book on the U.N. One feels the special pangs of John Bolton right now, up for ambassador to the U.N. Poor John, he was once derisory at the U.N.'s expense, using amusing language to bounce off the bureaucratic density of the organization. His barb was that if you lopped off the top ten stories of that building, nothing much would be missed. But--no jokes in church.

And church is what the U.N. is, in solemn quarters. There is even an organization called Citizens for Global Solutions. It has spent $20,000 on ads in Rhode Island urging the citizens of that monolithic state (10 percent GOP) to send disciplinary messages to Sen. Lincoln Chafee, whose vote on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is critical to the success of Mr. Bolton's candidacy. Without Chafee, the committee is tied, and Bolton can't therefore get preemptive consideration in the Senate, where he would be passed.

What we are seeing is a tug of war involving not President Bush's authority to send his own man to the U.N., but rather the reelection, in 2006, of a senator in Rhode Island. Chafee is a Republican. If he feels bound to stay with the GOP, that's because, as he reminded everyone recently, he was named after Abraham Lincoln. So he has not changed party affiliation, but his voting record would fit nicely within the bounds of Democratic orthodoxy.

The president is looking for a strong man at the U.N., and here is the problem. The strength of the organization depends on the strength within it of the United States. To the extent that the U.N. goes its own way, you get such as the Commission on Human Rights, which includes such human-rights devotees as Sudan, Zimbabwe, China, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia. That kind of thing may appeal to the Citizens for Global Solutions, but it doesn't really do very much for the U.N., except to remind us how many stories ...