The NYTimes

The NYTimes

has a snide op-ed this morning about John Bolton. The gist of their analysis? Bolton is against everything they're for (bi-lateral negotiations with North Korea, the International Criminal Court), therefore he's a horrible diplomat.

They try to use his own quotes against him. On North Korea, they find this comment from an interview Bolton did with the LATimes:

A sounder U.S. policy would start by making it clear to the North that we are indifferent to whether we ever have 'normal' diplomatic relations with it, and that achieving that goal is entirely in their interests, not ours. We should also make clear that diplomatic normalization with the U.S. is only going to come when North Korea becomes a normal country.

What's the NYTimes's point? As long as North Korea engages in their typical delusional saber-rattling, we're probably not going to have "normal" relations with them. Once they stop being the world's biggest brat, maybe we can get along.

On the ICC, they find some testimony before Congress:

Support for the International Criminal Court concept is based largely on emotional appeals to an abstract ideal of an international judicial system unsupported by any meaningful evidence and running contrary to sound principles of international crisis resolution.

I fail to see how this is damning. The ICC isn't controversy free. And many observers expect its powers to be primarily directed at the U.S. and Israel, instead of the countries that actually need the oversight (Zimbabwe, the Sudan).

The conclusion:

Which leaves us wondering what Mr. Bush's next nomination will be. Donald Rumsfeld to negotiate a new set of Geneva Conventions? Martha Stewart to run the Securities and Exchange Commission? Kenneth Lay for energy secretary?

Has the NYTimes hired a teenager to write their op-eds now?