John R. Bolton, former US Representative to the UN, has a reputation as a world-renowned jack ass, so I couldn’t resist the opportunity to hear him at last night’s Tom McCall Forum, an annual political debate. Bolton was debating with former Congressman Lee H. Hamilton, who served on the Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran.

I lived in Europe for a year, so I have a strong sense of the characteristics that are unique to an “American”—and hey, not all of them are bad. In reasonable quantities. But Bolton was like an American times ten with a strong dose of nasty.

Let’s put it this way, his opening remarks included the statement, “Diplomacy is not the objective.” I physically cringed picturing him at a UN meeting.

When one of the panelists posed a question about Blackwater, Bolton’s curtly replied, “I think this controversy is politicized and over blown,” which elicited boos from the audience.

When Hamilton took the stage, I wondered if the tall, elderly man would be much of a match for Bolton. But soon it was clear that, not only was Hamilton much more popular with the audience, his opinions reflected a pragmatic approach to foreign policy based on a respect for the rest of the world.

In his opening remarks he said, “We are the world’s most powerful nation, but America’s ability to accomplish things abroad has never been so limited.”

In comparison, Bolton stuck to a simplistic, hard-line approach that focused completely on preemptively striking “rogue” nations before they could create nuclear weapons. It seemed like, as far as he was concerned, it was still 2001.

In the end, it was clear who was the better diplomat. Hamilton closed with the remark that in the future he hoped America “will not savage those who do not agree with us.”

-Jennifer Furniss