The man for the job

According to this profile, lifted from Right Web, John Bolton is the perfect choice for US ambassador to the UN:

John Bolton , George W. Bush's undersecretary of State for arms control and international security, is the administration's designated treaty killer. Since his nomination (which was opposed by Secretary of State Colin Powell), Bolton's reputation as a rabid opponent of international agreements and loose-lipped critic of foreign regimes has become the stuff of legend, at times hampering the State Department's ability to undertake negotiations. In July 2003, during the run up to the six-nation talks with North Korea, Bolton described Korean head of state Kim Jong Il as a "tyrannical dictator" of a country where "life is a hellish nightmare." North Korea responded in kind, saying that "such human scum and bloodsucker is not entitled to take part in the talks. ... We have decided not to consider him as an official of the U.S. administration any longer nor to deal with." The State Department sent a replacement for Bolton to the talks.

Bolton 's penchant for going off half-cocked extends well beyond North Korean issues. Some notable examples:
• At a 1994 panel discussion sponsored by the World Federalist Association, Bolton claimed, "There's no such thing as the United Nations," saying that ''If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.''
• During the July 2001 global U.N. conference on small arms and light weapons, Bolton told delegates that the United States was not only opposed to any agreement restricting civilian possession of small arms, it also didn't appreciate "the promotion of international advocacy activity by international or non-governmental organizations." Bolton 's delegation was accompanied by that distinguished American NGO the National Rifle Association.
• In 1998, when he was senior vice president of the American Enterprise Institute, Bolton described the International Criminal Court (ICC) as "a product of fuzzy-minded romanticism [that] is not just naïve, but dangerous."
• Bolton told the Wall Street Journal that signing the letter informing the U.N. that Washington was renouncing the Rome Treaty to create the ICC "was the happiest moment of my government service."
• Regarding efforts to add a verification proposal to the bioweapons convention, Bolton told colleagues in 2001, "It's dead, dead, dead, and I don't want it coming back from the dead."

Bolton was wrong about one thing, if the entire UN apparatus were to disappear, we'd notice, the world would suddenly be better off.

Further confirmation that Bolton is a good choice comes from Reuters:

The decision surprised many U.N. diplomats and upset Democrats in Congress, who denounced the choice as divisive and capable of jeopardizing Bush's attempts this year to repair diplomatic ties frayed in his first term over the Iraq war.

The Dems are upset and UN diplomats are surprised; Bolton is the perfect man for the job alright.

Update: More recommendations for Bolton:

The Democrats' 2004 presidential nominee, Senator Kerry of Massachusetts, called Mr. Bolton's nomination "just about the most inexplicable appointment the president could make to represent the United States to the world community."

The ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Biden of Delaware, said in a statement that the Bolton nomination gave him "great pause." "In light of the president's recent efforts to reach out to allies and the international community, I'm surprised at the choice of John Bolton to be our U.N. representative," Mr. Biden said.

The same article explains Bolton's nomination for Kerry:

The selection of John Bolton as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is one of the clearest signals the White House has given to date that the second Bush administration intends to push U.N. reform over any reconciliation with the international body, which is the subject of multiple fraud investigations for its management of the oil-for-food program.

The left refuses to see that the UN needs an overhaul.

Update: Fred Kaplan clinches it:

Just as it looked like George W. Bush might be nudging toward multilateralism, he goes and appoints John Bolton as his ambassador to the United Nations. There could be no clearer sign that the contempt for the international organization, which was such a prominent feature of Bush's first term, will extend into his second term with still greater force and eloquence.

In short, if the trends that President Bush is celebrating continue to unfold—that is, if traditional structures of authority continue to break down and new patterns of politics take shape amid great turbulence—the United Nations is likely to play a greater role, if just as a legitimizing intermediary, in the coming years. It would therefore be a good idea, for our own influence, if the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations were someone who takes the organization a little bit seriously.

However, it is probably a mistake to view Bolton's appointment as merely an unwise choice. This administration, it should by now be clear, acts with uncommon unity. High-level officials are chosen for their inclination to serve the Oval Office. The fact that Bolton has been selected as the new man at the United Nations indicates that, to the extent President Bush pursues diplomatic solutions to international problems, he will not do so through the United Nations. If there was calculated reason behind his nomination, Bolton will use his chair as strictly a bully pulpit.

Bush and his team may feel that their much-derided unilateralism has been the cause of the remarkable events these past few months—the elections in Iraq, Ukraine, and the Palestinian Authority; the uprisings in Lebanon, which may spur the end of Syria's occupation; the popular stirrings in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and possibly elsewhere. Even if they're right, and they did bring all this about (a proposition that's true in some respects and a huge stretch in others), it's another thing entirely to turn elections and uprisings into democratic governments. Moses couldn't do it by himself. Neither can Bush. And John Bolton is the wrong man to help him sway others to the cause.

If reality can't sway them to the cause, what hope does Bolton have?