In a 54-38 vote, Democratic Senators, joined by Ohio Republican George Voinovich, successfully foiled a second attempt yesterday to kill the Democratic filibuster against Bush administration UN Ambassador nominee John Bolton. The first attempt, on May 26, failed by a 56-42 vote, with one Democrat and one Republican not voting.

Ending the filibuster requires 60 votes, but Republicans could not reach that number even with three Democrats voting for the motion and five others (along with three Republicans) not voting.

AP reports that Senate majority leader Bill Frist told told reporters early today that he would not schedule another vote to end the filibuster, but reversed himself later under pressure from the White House.

Democrats, led by Joe Biden of Delaware, are demanding that the White House provide additional documents relating to Bolton’s performance and behavior in his previous position, undersecretary of state for arms control. Specifically, Democrats want to know what role Bolton played in preparing Congressional testimony about Syria’s banned weapons programs he was ultimately prevented from giving because of intelligence agency concerns about the accuracy of it — the issue being whether he attempted to pressure analysts into providing information tailored to his preferences rather than the reality — and whether Bolton had a legitimate need to see top secret National Security Agency intercepts he requested and received regarding other US officials.

Washington Note proprietor Steve Clemons has been at the forefront of the fight against Bolton’s nomination, and has probably done more than any other single individual to raise the nomination’s profile both inside and outside Washington. In his commentary on yesterday’s vote, Clemons said that “So many people are surprised by the White House’s intransigence on the documents that they believe that something seriously damaging must be in them.”

At this point, the White House has to make everything available — or nothing will be acceptable.

That is not likely to happen.

That means that the White House maintains a stance on Bolton that pushes a vote. The Dems “lock down” as Frist has said. And nothing changes.

That then gives the White House some excuse to make a recess appointment — but that would be yet another sad commentary on the White House’s refusal to take advice from the Senate that this person is wrong for the job and a flawed representative of American interests to the United Nations.

It’s true that Bolton, whose contempt for the United Nations and for international treaties has been widely reported, is seen by his many detractors as exactly the wrong man for the job. The administration’s intransigence, however, suggests that they see him not as “a flawed representative of American interests to the United Nations,” but rather, and because of those flaws, exactly the right man to represent if not the country’s then at least the administration’s interests to the UN.

In other words, the administration may well prefer an obviously dysfunctional United Nations to one that Americans and others think worth working with, in which case John Bolton is the ideal candidate for the job.

Among the troublesome issues the UN will face during the next year is Iran’s progress toward a working nuclear reactor. The Russian-built facility will be ready to accept fuel deliveries within that year, and the Bush administration does not want that to happen. Their choices are to work through the UN Security council to place sanctions on Iran that would prevent the activation of the reactor, something the Russians would almost certainly veto absent compelling evidence that Iran is attempting to build a nuclear weapon, or to once again attempt to build a coalition (read, Britain) outside the UN to deal with the Iranians and their nuclear program.

Given the consequences of the administration’s last trip around the UN, it seems likely that most Americans would prefer a less individualistic approach toward Iran than the administration pursued against Iraq. But it the organization is in meltdown, the US might garner more support within the country for a unilateral (or bilateral, if Tony Blair is still in office) action against Iran. John Bolton’s abrasive, contemptuous approach to the UN seems more calculated to produce that meltdown rather than, as the administration claims to want, “reform” of the organization.

Again in other words: the administration want John Bolton to completely bugger the UN so that the administration are not forced to consult it with respect to Iran. Bolton has said already that despite IAEA (the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog) reports to the contrary, it is “impossible to believe” that Iran’s nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. And despite US support for an extensive nuclear power program under the Shah of Iran prior to the Islamic revolution, other administration officials — Dick Cheney, who was a member of the Nixon administration when the US first began supporting the program, among them — now say that Iran has no need for nuclear power because of its oil and natural gas resources. At the same time, Bolton has said he sees no reason Iraq couldn’t have nuclear power plants “a ways down the road.”

The IAEA and other arms inspectors at the UN were right about Iraq. John Bolton and the rest of the administration were either lying, which seems incontrovertible now, or wrong. Democrats are doing the country an enormous service by preventing the administration from sending a wrecking ball, in the person of Bolton, to represent this country at the UN.

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