Go to the United Nations, and lead with your right

Because the nomination of John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations has caused such vocal opposition, I think it’s time for me to take a stand. I’m for it. What’s wrong with having a representative in the U.N. who can punch France in the mouth?

Not since Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev took off a shoe and pounded it on a table, which was regarded at the time as a traditional Russian greeting, has there been any kind of real confrontation in the General Assembly.

The incident occurred during the Cold War when Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. was our ambassador. He was the kind of soft-spoken aristocratic New Englander who preferred a more gentlemanly form of give and take, perhaps during cocktails at the Harvard Club, while still wearing one’s shoes.

Those were the Kennedy years, when people who could think were still popular in Washington, but this is the era of George W. Bush, where fussy intellectualism is not necessarily a requirement for leadership.

It takes too much time and creates an image of weakness.

When our president nominated Bolton, he was simply projecting his own brand of cannonade diplomacy that has proved so effective on the world stage. While the Senate Foreign Relations Committee may seem a little nervous about sending a guy to the U.N. who pretty much hates the U.N., I still say: Why not?

As one Republican senator remarked, the nominee should not be “drinking tea with his pinkies up.” Good thinking, cowboy.

Instead of debating one of those whispery ambassadors from France over every nitpicking issue, like, say, going to war, Bolton would just get up, cross the room and slap him aside the head to make his point. If he cried, as the French are inclined to do, he’d slap him again.

In boot camp that was the theory of my Marine drill instructor, who wandered up and down the ranks slapping recruits aside their shaved heads. I was among his favorite targets, but had learned to turn my head just so, thereby receiving only a glancing blow and preventing myself from becoming a brain-damaged conservative talk show host.

Bolton’s nomination by President Bush was greeted with a good deal of anxiety from both the left and the right when it was revealed that, as an undersecretary of state, he was a vengeful bully and possibly a liar. Also, he had no use for the U.N.

I realize that it might seem strange to a lot of you that a man who dislikes the very notion of having to discuss or debate anything should be named to a body whose very purpose is to discuss and debate, but that’s only because you don’t understand the current policy of the administration’s GETO-1-2 Policy. That would be Give ‘Em the Old 1-2, a jab to unsettle them, followed by an uppercut to put them away.

You might recall that during the debate over the future of Saddam Hussein, who was then fully clothed and hostile, France, Germany and Russia opposed our invasion, I mean our liberation, of Iraq. What bothered us the most was France’s opposition, a nation we rescued in World War II from having to learn to sing “Deutschland Uber Alles.” We began an immediate campaign to end Gallic domination of our culture by disavowing French rolls and French kissing, even during the most overheated moments.

The effects of the campaign were minimal, and aides to Bush began formulating a plan that resulted in GETO-1-2. After the election, given a mandate to pursue his somewhat, er, physical policies, he decided on Bolton to teach the U.N. a lesson in uppercut debate that it would never forget.

This, as I’ve said, has made a number of people on both sides of the eagle more than a little nervous. What was euphemistically described as Bolton’s “management style” caused the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to send his nomination to the full Senate without a recommendation, which is the political equivalent of leaving a baby at the doorstep of an empty house.

Despite the insistence of some members of the GOP that an ambassador didn’t have to be Mr. Congeniality, which would have required a good deal of smiling and air-kissing, Republican Sen. George V. Voinovich declared that, as an undersecretary of state, “John Bolton would have been fired had he worked for a major corporation.” Fortunately for him, I guess, he was in government and not in the private sector.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, admitting that Bolton lacked what is regarded in political circles as interpersonal skills, promised that he would be “closely supervised,” meaning that, short of fitting him with a leash and a choke chain, she would personally forbid him from biting any of our friends, of whom we have fewer every day.

But I say it’s about time we put someone in the U.N. willing to floor a Frenchman, dropkick a German and sucker punch a Russian. Sooner or later they’ll begin to understand the qualities of agreement. When arm-twisting fails, give ‘em the old 1-2. It’s the American way.