Don't "let that clumsy cowboy George Bush send John Bolton to the United Nations!" the Democrats warned. "The man is grating and acerbic. He says insulting things about the organization. He'll offend everyone and set our diplomacy back for years."

The Democrats blocked the formal Bolton nomination last year, letting it be known they were prepared to filibuster. (By consensus, it takes 60 votes to end a filibuster, and the Republicans had only 55, minus defector George Voinovich of Ohio.) And so President Bush sent Mr. Bolton to Turtle Bay on a short-term recess appointment.

Now Mr. Bolton's ambassadorship comes back before the Senate. If the Democrats were right -- as opposed to merely acting as partisan obstructionists, trying to keep this president from exercising his constitutional prerogatives in diplomacy and foreign policy -- they should now have no problem demonstrating that all their warnings about Mr. Bolton were right and then some, simply by citing his many gaffes and failures over the past year.

Only one problem. So effective has Mr. Bolton been at the United Nations -- firm and forthright, but no temper tantrums, no insults -- that Sen. Voinovich, who had previously sided with the Democrats against the posting, has now announced he will support Mr. Bolton in the Foreign Relations Committee and on the Senate floor.

So, will Democrats with broader ambitions -- such as Sen. Hillary Clinton -- now go through the exercise of a purely partisan filibuster to deprive the United States of a representative who, according to his U.N. colleagues, has been calm, firm, forthright and effective?

"During his career in international public service, Bolton helped design the U.S. action that pushed Iraq out of Kuwait and was part of the effort persuading Libya to drop its weapons program," the New York Daily News editorialized this week. "New York's Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton must not participate in such a senatorial hissy fit."

"Bolton has a superb record and to deny him would send a dreadful message to the world that the president is not in charge of U.S. foreign policy," the News continued. "Even uglier, it would be doing the bidding of Kofi Annan and the secretary-general's enforcer Mark Malloch Brown, who has cozied up to the Democrats in the hope of dumping Bolton."

Half a continent away, the previously skeptical Dallas Morning News agrees: "Bolton's relentlessness was an asset in prodding the Security Council to get tough on North Korea. The United Nations is too often a place where foot-dragging indecision cloaks itself in the niceties of protocol. In those instances, it helps to have a U.N. ambassador willing and able to cut through the cant."

Indeed, in his year at the United Nations, Mr. Bolton has shone a spotlight on the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. (Yes, he displeased many in the "international community." Oh, the horror.) He also stood courageously against the fake, cosmetic "reform" of a Human Rights Commission run by nations under the control of infamous despots. "No wonder Kofi and pals feel threatened," the Daily News concludes.

Heck, if the gentleman does this well representing American interests among those who hate this country and the idea that we might still stand tall and proud for freedom and human rights, those who hope to see us weakened and angle to snatch political advantage from every failure, perhaps Mr. Bush should consider him for an even tougher job in future: U.S. ambassador to the Democratic Party.