The Armageddon Man

By Tom Barry, Foreign Policy in Focus. Posted April 12, 2005.

When Irving Kristol — regarded by many as the "godfather of neoconservatism" — described a neoconservative as a "liberal who has been mugged by reality," he was not describing John Bolton. Unlike many of his supporters in the Bush administration, the U.N. ambassador-designate did not start out his political career on the center-left — either as a liberal, social democrat, or socialist.

In the 1950s through the 1970s, the political forerunners who established neoconservatism as the defining trend within American conservatism went through a left-right transformation. In that political morphing, the neoconservatives have redefined U.S. politics from the Reagan administration through the current Bush administration.

Bolton shares much with the closely knit neoconservative political camp: their red-meat anticommunism, their obsession with China, their support of right-wing Zionism in Israel, and their glorification of U.S. power as the main force for good and against evil in our world. Bolton has also forged close links with neoconservatives while a scholar at the Manhattan Institute and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Although sharing most of the neoconservative ideology, Bolton is not himself a true-blue neocon.

It's not only his political origins that separates him from other middle-aged neoconservatives. Bolton also stands apart from the neoconservative camp because of his longtime association with moderate conservative James Baker and the close ties he had with Dixiecrat Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC). Unlike most neocons, who stay removed from electoral politics, Bolton has repeatedly immersed himself in the mundane and often dirty politics of ensuring Republican Party electoral victories.

One political label that certainly fits Bolton is that of "hawk" or militarist. Like most other Bush administration officials, Bolton is a militarist who has never gone to war — which according to some detractors makes him a "chickenhawk." In his work in the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush administrations, Bolton has become known as the right's most effective and strident opponent of the United Nations and all forms of global governance and international law not controlled by the U.S. government.

A Career in 'Extremism'

In law school and throughout his legal and political career, Bolton has gained a reputation as being abrasive, astute, humorless, and relentless in the pursuit of his political agenda. In his office at the State Department today, Bolton displays a mock grenade with the label "To John Bolton — World's Greatest Reaganite."

As a teenager Bolton already believed, as Barry Goldwater did, that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." In 1964 Bolton volunteered in Goldwater's presidential campaign. After high school, Bolton went to Yale and then on to Yale Law School, where he befriended current Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and other rightists who were among the first members of the conservative Federalist Society.

After joining the Reagan administration in 1981, Bolton quickly gained a reputation as being one of the new breed of "New Right lawyers" who operated at the second tier of the State Department and gained top policy positions in the Justice Department. Bolton gained entry into the Reagan administration through strong support from Sen. Helms, and from New Right strategist Richard Viguerie and his influential Conservative Digest. During Reagan's second term, Bolton began working together with a team of Federalist Society lawyers under Attorney General Edwin Meese. With Federalist Society members and activists in top policy positions, Bolton's tenure marks the first time the Justice Department came under the ideological influence of the New Right.

The chief goal of the Federalist Society has been to roll back the purported hold of the "liberal establishment" on the judiciary and legal profession. Federalist Society members also oppose liberalism in the international arena in the form of international law and multilateral governance. Together with AEI, the Federalist Society sponsors "NGOWatch," a project that monitors the activities of nongovernmental organizations they consider anti-American.

From the start of his political career, Bolton has been a Republican Party loyalist. As a private attorney before joining the Reagan administration in 1981, he worked with Sens. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and Paul Laxalt (R-Nev.). In the 1980s he participated in Republican Party efforts to beat back the voter registration campaigns organized by labor and black organizations. A veteran of Southern electoral campaigns, Bolton appealed to the racism of white voters and reprised his role in the 2000 presidential campaign.

Working closely with his former boss James Baker during the Florida recount following the contested 2000 presidential election, Bolton once again proved his allegiance to the party and polished his reputation as someone "who gets things done." As part of the Republican Party's legal team headed by former Secretary of State Baker — Bolton's boss during the George H.W. Bush administration — Bolton put his hard-ball approach to partisan politics to work. In a complimentary article on Bolton, the Wall Street Journal in July 2002 reported that Bolton's "most memorable moment came after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a halt to the recount, when Mr. Bolton strode into a Tallahassee library, where the count was still going on, and declared: 'I'm with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the vote.'"

Tom Barry is policy director of the International Relations Center. Barry directs the IRC's Right Web project.

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