Digby: Hans and Franz

Kevin worries that using John Bolton's malevolent personality as a reason for scuttling the nomination is bad news for us because it gives people like Bill Kristol an excuse to make the argument that Democrats are sissies.

It seems to me that nominations are almost always scuttled on trivial charges rather than the substantive ones. Nowadays, people are creating nanny problems for troubled nominees who don't even have nannies. There seems to be a unspoken agreement that nominees will be allowed to bow out for some mistake or character quirk rather than a charge of incompetence or malfeasance. Perhaps it's a strange form of face saving for the president who nominated the person.