In a Rational World, John Bolton Would be Secretary of State

With all due respect to Ms. Rice, who's better than her recent predecessors, this piece in today's WSJ (free at OpinionJournal) illustrates why John Bolton should have the job instead.

Kim [Jong-il] is once again besting the U.S. in accomplishing his two central strategic objectives: staying in power and preserving his nuclear-weapons program. The working groups currently underway do nothing to achieve the proper ends of U.S. foreign policy. A few weeks ago in Shenyang, China, the "denuclearization" working group met without visible progress, even on permanently dismantling Yongbyon.

There is still simply no evidence that Pyongyang has made a decision to abandon its long-held strategic objective to have a credible nuclear-weapons capability. This inconvenient fact should make it impossible for the State Department to concede on other issues, even if it were inclined to do so. Creative minds are therefore working on ways to explain that any forthcoming North Korean declaration of its nuclear capabilities is "full and complete," thus eliminating the remaining troubling obstacles to full normalization of relations.

In short, Bolton understands--as does the president--the difference between strategy and feel-good, sound-byte headlines. To put it in sports terms: watch the body, not the head-fake.