John Bolton for president! Wait, that John Bolton?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yes, crazy neocon John Bolton:

John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, tells National Review Online that he is seriously considering a 2012 presidential run. "I am a Goldwater conservative," he says. "I am not a professional politician. I don't anticipate running a typical kind of campaign, if I do make that decision."

In an interview this morning in his Washington office, Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and longtime diplomat, opened up about a potential campaign, discussing his views on foreign policy and domestic affairs. "I just don't think that a Republican can convincingly oppose the president using talking-point platitudes," Bolton tells us. As he looks at his options, Bolton says that he wants to "shape the debate, and hopefully make an impact on the national-security issues."

He wouldn't win, of course, but, whatever his efforts at hyper-gravitas, he'd be an amusing addition to the Republican field (a field that could be as unamusing as Romney, Thune, and Pawlenty).

Remember that he only served as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. as a recess appointee. The Senate wasn't going to confirm him and so Bush II put him there on his own.

And why? Well, here's what I wrote about him back in 2005:

[B]y reputable accounts a reprehensible man who has intimidated and harassed subordinates at the State Department (where he is still -- God help us -- Cheney's minion (and formerly Powell's nemesis) as undersecretary of state for arms control... something he doesn't even believe in!), who childishly lashes out in red-faced rage at any and all disagreement from his staff, who seems to lack anything in the way of humility, who rejects the legitimacy of international law, who doesn't seem to grasp the complexity of international relations and the nuanced shades of international diplomacy, who amorally evaded the question of Rwandan genocide during his recent Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings, and who has repeatedly attacked the United Nations, even saying publicly that "if the U.N. Secretariat Building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."

For background, I highly recommend Fred Kaplan's articles at Slate from that time on Bolton's nomination: here, here, here, and here. 

The good thing about a Bolton run is that it would force Republicans to address Bush's foreign and military policies (when they'd rather lie about Obama, though of course Bolton do that, too) and remind voters that the Republican Party foreign policy establishment is controlled by warmongering neocon extremists who are hell-bent on exerting American power in reckless and irresponsible ways.

And hey, maybe he'd joke about nuking Chicago again. So hilarious -- at least to CPAC Insanitarium types.

Anyway, if Bolton wants to position himself as a "Goldwater conservative," there's really only one suitable response. And here it is: