One simple, eloquent act will tell the world that the Age of Barbarism is over and America has rejoined the civilized world:

Appoint Jimmy Carter Ambassador to the United Nations.

Or, with similar impact, appoint William Jefferson Clinton to the same office.

I tend to think Jimmy Carter is, if less spectacular, the better choice, because Clinton’s fingerprints are on some of the crueler policies in our recent past. But either choice will make the point:

Democrats demonstrate our respect for the other 96% of the planet by sending to the UN a statesman with a global constituency and a global reputation for humanity.

What the Man from Mars Concluded Imagine that a man from Mars dropped in for a while and kibitzed on our political discourse. Before too long he’d be thinking, “Hmmmm… considering that these beings are so preoccupied with global warming and a global economy and a global oil crisis and global terrorism and a global war on same, isn’t it a shame they don’t have some sort of global forum where they could deal with these crises?”

We do have that forum, of course: the UN. The Bushites, with their unerring instinct, systematically set about to threaten, humiliate and marginalize the only conceivable solution to our global problems. John Bolton’s nomination, which was tantamount to naming a holocaust denier Ambassador to Israel, was merely the final insult.

But Will Americans Ever Accept the UN? Of course they will. They already have.

It is true that there’s a xenophobic UN-hating fringe in America. A 2005 Gallup poll found 13% agreeing with the statement “America should give up its membership in the UN.” But then there’s a 13% that will agree with damned near anything. In the same poll 68% said that the UN should play a “leading” or “major” role in world affairs, and as recently as 1997 that number was 85%. In 2003 58% approved of the job the UN was doing--Bush’s UN-bashing drove that number down--but compare it to Bush’s own approval rating of 34%! Championed by a political Superstar, the UN’s reputation will soar.

We Care Enough to Send the Very Best And once raised, the bar can never again be lowered. A Bolton nomination becomes impossible, for now it’s understood that a UN posting is reserved for legends. Every country says, with Hallmark, “We care enough to send the very best.”

Costa Rica sends Arias. The Czech Republic sends Havel. Haiti sends Aristide. Poland sends Walesa. South Africa, doubly blessed, sends Tutu or Mandela. Russia sends Gorbachev. Ireland sends Bono. A UN General Assembly of Heroes captures the imagination of the popular press, upstages the venal crimes and misdemeanors of Washington and Moscow and Jakarta, and gives the world at last a government worthy of its people.