Bolton to Get Recess Appointment Friday Night?

The Senate is scheduled to recess for the month of August sometime Friday night, and there's talk that shortly after they bang down the gavel, President Bush will go ahead a make a recess appointment of John Bolton to the UN. We've talked about that before here and here.

The White House signaled on Monday that President Bush may bypass the Senate and appoint John Bolton, his embattled nominee for U.N. ambassador, to the post temporarily as hope faded for a Senate vote on the nomination.

Congressional aides said a recess appointment could be announced as early as Friday night, immediately after the Senate is scheduled to adjourn for the monthlong August break. A recess appointment would allow Bolton to take up the U.N. post but he would serve only until January 2007.

I've had some reservations about this approach in light of the fact that there's now a Supreme Court nomination on the table, but some Dems are saying they won't hold a Bolton appointment against nominee Roberts:

Senate Democratic leaders have removed a possible hurdle by signaling that they would not use a recess appointment of Bolton to hold up Bush's nomination of John Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"It's unlikely that one would be used against the other," said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

The key word there is 'unlikely'. My guess is that the strategy actually goes something like this. Make innocuous statements about the Bolton appointment until the appointment actually happens, and then run like stuck pigs to the nearest microphone to denounce the President, Bolton, Cheney, Rove, Frist, Roberts and anyone else they can think of. They'll act shocked....SHOCKED!...at the audacity of the President to appoint this loose cannon to the UN without receiving Senate approval. It will be quite a liberal hysteria-fest.

I think at this point a recess appointment is the right thing to do as it's important to have a strong UN Ambassador in place before the UN reconvenes in September. Whether he has Senate approval or not, Bolton will be our guy and the rest of the world will have to deal with him. Given the move by some in the UN to assess international taxes (as discussed here), it will be important to have a no-nonsense guy sitting in the U.S. chair.