I guess we all knew it was coming, but I miss the Walrus already.

So far with the Democratic takeover of Congress, conservatives have been able to mostly chuckle. The Murtha/Hoyer debacle. Alcee Hastings. Charlie Rangel and the draft. This is one of the first times that I’ve said something along the lines of “Ratzen fratzen no-good ding-damn-doodle Democrats” since Election Day. Something tells me it won’t be the last.

Bolton’s been good. He’s been better than good, actually. I’m very curious to see if Schumer, Reid, Durbin, etc. float the names of any nominees they’d like to see and how those nominees compare to Bolton.

Jim: Yeah, you kinda knew this was coming, but now I want to see who our new Congressional majorities would like to see in the position. I refer to my fondness of my left-of-center friends in the below posting, but I’d have to say that a lot of my friends on the left see the United Nations as they want to see it, not as it is. They believe that the institution is not rot through with corruption to the core, they believe that it is not dominated by rabidly anti-American and anti-Israeli voices, they believe that it can genuinely be trusted to protect Americans and U.S. interests, and so on.

John Bolton went to the United Nations… well, kinda like Jim Webb, “born fighting.” Ornery and not inclined to give anybody the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that’s not the right approach at the United Nations, but we’ve tried the nice guy route a lot lately — Negroponte, John Danforth, Anne Patterson. Before that, some heavy hitters in Democratic foreign policy circles - Madeline Albright, Richard Holbrooke, Bill Richardson. And year after year, the U.N. seems less and less relevant to solving the world’s problems; it resembles an expense-account-abusing, money-skimming debating society that specializes in fiddling as the world’s trouble spots burn.

Democrats want a kindler, gentler voice at the United Nations. Fine. Let’s hear some possibilities, and we’ve got to raise the question: To what end? Will a “nicer” representative really help advance U.S. interests, or are we just sparing the U.N. crowd the discomfort of dealing with a hardass who will call them on their BS?

Marshall: John Bolton’s departure is a loss both for the U.N. and for the U.S.

Look, rightly or wrongly, the U.N. is a joke. It’s a nest of corruption and nepotism. More importantly, it’s record of failure in key crises is consistent and unmatched. It’s utterly in need of serious reform — if not complete overhaul. John Bolton was a semi-outsider who knew how to fix the U.N.’s problems. But the U.N. bureaucracy — starting with the top bureaucrat himself, Kofi Annan — weren’t interested. They like their cushy jobs and their big pensions. Bolton was a threat, and they didn’t want him around.

As for the U.S., we need a strong voice for our interests at the U.N. Too often our amabassadors go up there and get sucked into the corrupting culture of the place, and become voices for the U.N. in America. Bolton was a strong voice. And Lincoln Chafee has, effectively, fired him.

It’s a loss, and not a small one.