Thursday, April 14, 2005

Boltonathon Hearings

Fire of Liberty

Ken Adelman has a good article on the Bolton hearings over at Tech Central Station. Here's a peek:
From a trashing confirmation process, key senators not only get on the evening news and inflict some reputation damage on the Bush foreign policy team, but they gain if the nominee crouches in a defensive position and pledges impotence in the job.

This process worked beautifully a few months back with Larry Summers. Summers stood out for courage among his peers -- requiring African-American faculty members of Harvard to maintain intellectual excellence (instead of cutting new CDs), bringing ROTC back onto the Harvard campus, and examining whatever gender differences may exist.

The faculty outcry, resulting in an unprecedented resolution of no-confidence, has surely changed Summers. He became a serial apologist, and now will strain to avoid saying, or doing, anything controversial. Which is to say anything important.

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