UN Ambassador:
President Bush's appointment of John Bolton as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was a huge surprise. It is the clearest sign yet that Bush is taking off his gloves and preparing to make life miserable for the UN establishment. 1) Bolton, the current undersecretary of State for arms control, seemed earmarked for oblivion during Bush's second term. He is no John Danforth. 2) Bolton's nomination to State in 2001 was greeted by Democrat apoplexy. He was decried then as a dangerous ideologue who would "dismantle" world efforts at arms control. Senate Democrats, one after another, rose and recited Bolton quotations they found unpalatable and outrageous. 3) Among Bolton's better quotations: "The Europeans can be sure that America's days as a well-bred doormat for EU political and military protections are coming to an end." Also: "While treaties may be politically or even morally binding, they are not legally obligatory." More: "There is no such thing as the United Nations." And finally: "If the UN secretariat building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference." 4) Bolton is a fearless movement conservative who, as undersecretary of State, sat at the head table at last year's 40th anniversary banquet of the American Conservative Union. It is difficult to imagine an appointment that would be more offensive to congressional liberals, to Washington's diplomatic class or even to moderate Republicans. Yet Bolton's nomination to State in 2001 was confirmed by a Senate vote of 57-43. Five of the seven Senate Democrats who voted to confirm Bolton in 2001 are still in the Senate now. 5) Bolton's nomination comes just days after UN observers shouted, jeered and catcalled when the U.S. delegate to a UN convention on women, Ellen Sauerbrey, attempted to speak. Sauerbrey was pushing to prevent the UN's "Beijing plus 10" conference from being seen as establishing an internationally recognized right to abortion. 6) The nomination also comes as the Bush Administration enjoys major new successes in foreign policy and thus has the opportunity to punish UN officials. Syrian troops began to empty out of western Lebanon, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced multi-candidate elections and Iraq's newly elected parliament began its work in Baghdad. Social Security:
Conservatives are demoralized by the White House's failure to sell its own reform program for Social Security effectively, despite all the time the administration has had to prepare during four years in office. 1) The strength of any privatization plan is that it places the burden of raising money for future retirees on the private sector-on returns from private investments by individuals-rather than on the taxpayer's back. Yet Bush continues to play down this aspect of the plan and to assert that private accounts will not solve Social Security's solvency problem on their own. 2) The failure to rely on personal accounts for the "real" solution has prompted Bush to countenance ideas wholly unpalatable to both sides of the political spectrum: tax hikes and benefit cuts, including a possible rise in the ceiling for payroll taxes. 3) Democrats persist in their position that there is no problem with Social Security. This stand is mathematically indefensible, but they have no incentive whatsoever to take any other position. For his part, Bush has stepped up that pressure with a public speaking tour and the setting up of a Social Security "war room" in the Treasury Department's public affairs office. 4) House and Senate Democratic leaders believe that to cooperate at all with Social Security reform would be political suicide. Such reform would cut into their political base of government-dependents and add to the Republican demographic of owners and investors. 5) Democrats see on the horizon an opportunity to win again-perhaps even to regain their majority status-within 10 years. At that point, absent major reforms to Social Security, a huge political clash will occur between older Social Security beneficiaries and the younger workers who are still paying taxes into the system. The beneficiaries would deliver victory to the Democrats over apathetic younger workers, who do not tend to vote in the same numbers. 6) Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's openness to Bush's plan and to personal accounts in his testimony recently brought Democratic criticism raining down on his head. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, noting that he opposed Greenspan's reappointment as Federal Reserve chairman, called the famously thin-skinned Greenspan "one of the biggest political hacks we have in Washington." 7) Meanwhile, DNC Chairman Howard Dean created cacophony by departing from the party line that there is no problem with Social Security. Although he made a point of disagreeing with Bush's reform plan, Dean admitted that there is in fact a problem with the financing of the Social Security program, and that in 30 years, if nothing is done, benefits will be reduced by about 20%.
