Years ago I worked at a prestigious bank in Frankfurt and had my first encounter with a certain type of mid-level manager: der Radfahrer. This manager would terrorize his subordinates while doing everything to impress the Abteilungs-Direktor (Vice President). The goal was to achieve the pathetic title of Prokurist so he could look down his nose at the rest the employee population. We all know the type: der Radfahrer – the cyclist. Nach oben buckeln und
nach unten treten – bow and scrape to those above while kicking those below. From the testimony yesterday in the US Senate we learn that John Bolton, President Bush’s nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, is the worst kind of Radfahrer.
In caustic and unusually personal testimony before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, Carl W. Ford Jr., who was assistant secretary for
intelligence and research, said Mr. Bolton was a "kiss-up, kick-down
sort of guy" who "abuses his authority with little people," and an
ill-suited nominee to become ambassador to the United Nations.
Kiss-up to the Vice President (Cheney) while bullying his subordinates, who were doing their jobs: that discribes Bolton. Laura Rozen has more thoughts about the guy on her blog:
Here’s my feeling, and forgive the language. One could perhaps respect
a bully if that bully was a bully in the cause of making the UN an
institution that saved human life more effectively. Some might say
Richard Holbrooke fits this model. But you can’t respect a bully just because he’s a bully. From Bolton’s testimony yesterday about not having any particular interest in the UN intervening to stop genocide in Rwanda,
even with the benefit of all that we know now that close to a million
innocent people were slaughtered, it’s clear Bolton’s bullying is in no
service to the good of making the UN save lives, or preventing North
Korea from getting nuclear weapons, or Iran. His grandstanding has done
nothing to prevent North Korea from becoming a nuclear power. It’s just
asshole for the sake of being an asshole. It’s in the service of
nothing. The worst you can really say about Mr. Bolton is not that he’s a bully, but that he’s a failure.
Well, it’s worse than that, since Bolton used his bullying to produce the false evidence concerning weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that his masters needed to launch their preemptive war. There must be a special place in hell for self-loathing guys like Bolton who send other people’s children off to war so he can please the boss. Well Mr. Bolton, you got your promotion.
