Why is it I think Bolton's comments say more about Bolton than they do about Clinton or Obama.

The answer to Bolton's comment is that Obama will send Hillary for the preliminary meetings before he meets directly with Iran's leaders. (I am assuming Bolton is referring to the difference between Barack and Hillary on direct negotiations with enemy states). Since Hillary is anything but a low-level fo-po staffer he can legitimately send her while covering himself from critics who've attacked him about his belief in direct presidential talks.

Ha!

If it confuses Bolten then he must be doing something right.

Apparently even Rush LImbaugh sees this as a good move though for mostly Machiavellian reasons.

But there are two things that the right really admires. One is effective use Machiavellian strategy and another is "never say die" toughness. Whether they admitted it or not they also had a love/hate thing for the Clintons becuase they just couldn't keep them down.

When Hillary ran for president I always suspected that if she got the nomination a lot of conservatives would vote for here and there would be a boom for Hillary look alike dominatrixes particularly in the Washington area.

I think that after her brutal and long primary fight with Obama a whole lot of them really did come to admire her for toughness. I don't think it was just political convenience. I think those Jacksonian types came to think that she had a lot more in common with them than they had assumed. The tribe kind of saw her as an honorary member. And now they realize that Obama is a lot shrewder than they assumed as well.

So they make the best out of what seems to be the worst of political situations for them.

Phil and Mich: exactly.

In any event, Bolton shows how fucking ignorant he is about Iran.  First, the US is already opening an interest protection office in Tehran - as opposed to having Switzerland carry the ball - and so low level contacts on purely bilateral issues have already begun.  Second, There are going to be Presidential elections in six months' time.  Ahmadinejad has no base of support left, even among the rabid conservatives.  If he wins, it will have to be through an openly stolen election, which means that you have good grounds to make the government even more of a pariah than it already is.  If he loses, it will be to one of five possible candidates, all of whom are considerably more rational (within Iran's peculiar context) than Iran's current version of W.  

All of which means that if you know anything at all about Iran, you also know that in about eight months, there is no likely to be any real difference as to either objective or means between Obama and Clinton.

Someone should buy Bolton a buttplug to stop the verbal diarrhea.

Bolton has been confused since November 4.  Or, Bolton isn't really confused -- it's code for "I wish Obama wouldn't keep doing smart things!"

philquin said:

"Why is it I think Bolton's comments say more about Bolton than they do about Clinton or Obama."

Because it does. Bolton is a Grade A, jingoistic, asshole. Like Cheney, his Unified Field Theory of International Relations is war, at all times, and everywhere.

In reality, like most of the neocons, his affection for tough guy stances is overcompensation for the fact that he is a physical coward, or, as I like to call them: Manginas. Cheney, the serial draft doger, yet war-monger extradonaire, is cut from the same chiffon. Although not a draft-dodger like Cheney, Bolton is , like Bush, a maniulator of the system who entered the national Guard.

However, I'll never forget Bolton's quote in his 25th reunion book fo his Yale class. Here it is, in all its craveness: "I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy. I considered the war in Vietnam already lost. [How nice for him to have the opportunity to make such a decision. I guess everyone who served during that time were suckers.]

later on Bolton, extended and clarified his remarks with this tendentious defense:"[B]y the time I was about to graduate in 1970, it was clear to me that opponents of the Vietnam war had made it certain we could not prevail, and that I had no great interest in going there to have Teddy Kennedy give it back to the people I might die to take it away from."

Again, the firebreathing, war-is-always-the-answeran, wasn't so enthusiactic about losing his life for a supposed lost cause and used Ted kennedy as a straw man. One wonders what the outcome of the Vietnam conflict would have been had the Bolton-type conservatives has siezed the reins from the nambie- pambie quitters serving in the 'Nam and went in there and enthusiastically kicked butt. Alas, we'll never know. Why? Because those cowards never wanted to go in the first place. They just wanted to grow to advocate sending other people'ss children to war.

Bolton has been seriously confused for some time - who does his mustache or his hair?

Fine article Barron.

Pretty predictable stuff from the Republican establishment. Lets wait and see, I find myself in the uncomfortable position of hoping Bolton's right and we see Hippie Hillary and not the latest Hillary - twisted and ill, as she clearly is, from a lifetime of compromising those early instincts.

Of course, we could actually see, yet again, that there is no substantive difference on FP between the two brands. Certainly not since...god knows...Ike/Kennedy? At least RFK, whose rhetoric about American troops committing immoral acts would have him run out of town.

Let's give Hope a chance.

Come on Hillary, get your bong out.

I think Bolton's well aware of all that Ick but as we know by now: reality is irrelevant to him if it gets in the way of his peculiar ideology.

I second your call for a buttplug though. Maybe, we could all contribute?

It would be money well spent if you ask me. Maybe Joe could set up a website: "Help us purchase a state-of- the-art Buttplug for John Bolton.com", care in the community, look after your local demented geriatrics.

Bolton, like W. and the rest of that crowd, only understands political hackery.  Let's do what the ideology instructs us to do, no matter what.  Obama is transcending politics into something akin to statesmanship and I am all for it.  I don't care if he appoints frickin' Newt Gingrich to a major post if it serves the country.