I read Tony Blair’s speech, given a few hours ago. It’s getting some whopper attention, but I think it’s a far less robust declaration that America should wrestle “directly” with Syria and Iran than the press thinks it is — but that said, I agree completely with the ‘perceived’ sentiment.
For those at their internet terminals now, Daniel Levy — who has been a whirling dervish in Washington changing the currents of opinion and possibility on Israel-Palestine negotiations — and I will be on Radio Open Source with Christopher Lydon (Boston National Public Radio) from 7 pm until 8 pm EST.
The President’s team ‘has a plan’ regarding the seemingly irrational obsession with keeping John Bolton working at the United Nations. We just don’t know what that plan is. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will vote Bolton down, decisively and definitively, if called to vote this week.
Steny Hoyer will most likely be the next Democratic Party Leader in the House of Representatives despite Nancy Pelosi’s support of John Murtha today. But Pelosi’s move is gutsy — and diplomatic.
Aspen Institute Berlin Director Jeffrey Gedmin has an interesting and useful piece, “Even Happier than the Democrats,” in the Weekly Standard today. Gedmin previously directed the New Atlantic Initiative at the American Enterprise Institute.
Something strange is cooking on the John Bolton nomination. . . First of all, John Bolton’s nomination was formally sent to the U.S. Senate yesterday, Thursday, between 10:00 a.m. and 10:30 a.m.
Tomorrow I am taping a show at CNN‘s studios in New York on the process by which big decisions about stand-out “personalities” — heroes and villains — are made. This show will be a special segment on Time‘s “person of the year” decision-making process.
I have a call into Speaker Nancy Pelosi for a comment on President Bush’s efforts to push John Bolton’s nomination again today.
Word has just reached me from a well-placed source that the White House has continued to push John Bolton’s confirmation prospects as US Ambassador to the United Nations despite the election outcome.
Here is an interesting article on the demise of moderate Republicans by Alex Wayne of Congressional Quarterly but whch appears in the New York Times apparently (at least on the web).
