1. This at the very least slows things down. He was reported to the full Senate without a recommendation. Under those circumstances, how can further hearings/debate be refused?

2. Midwestern isolationism isn’t what it used to be. Voinovich, like Hagel, talks about foreign policy very much the way modern liberal multilateralists do. Robert Novak opposed the Iraq war but supported Bolton, seeing both issues through a nationalist prism. It turns out that there is no real constituency behind that point of view.

3. It’s long struck me what shallow roots Bush’s foreign policy and the principles underlying it have in the Republican party. How committed are the 2008 hopefuls to that policy and those principles? Giuliani and McCain seem genuinely supportive. The rest of the lot seem to be go with the prevailing Republican winds.