<em>The Atlantic</em> Politics Daily: What John Bolton Says He Knows

Graeme also profiled Bolton, back when the mustachioed firebrand was still serving in Trump’s cabinet.

Bolton is Trump’s third national security adviser. His appointment was delayed for two reasons, both anatomical. First was the issue of his mustache, a droopy soup-strainer that made Trump initially pass Bolton over because he did not think, according to Steve Bannon in Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, that “he looks the part.” (Trump instead chose Michael Flynn, who lasted only weeks, then H. R. McMaster, a clean-shaven three-star general, who served from February 2017 until Bolton took over last April.)

The second impediment was more substantial, and had stalled Bolton’s ascent in previous administrations as well. “He is incredibly smart and capable,” a Bolton acquaintance told me. “He could have risen faster if he had just been less of a dick.”

Read the full piece.

Now vulnerable GOP senators are under more pressure than ever to subpoena Bolton. (Mitt Romney said on Monday that it was “increasingly likely” the Senate would do so.) David Frum made the case last September for why Bolton should speak up:

Bolton has been a loyal soldier for his president through all these difficulties. His reward was open disrespect and then public humiliation.

Read the full argument, as relevant as ever today.

—Saahil Desai

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« SNAPSHOT »

(Rick Wilking / Reuters)

The 2020 Democratic candidate Andrew Yang and his wife Evelyn outside a town hall meeting in Sioux City, Iowa today, just a week out from the first votes of this presidential primary.

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« IDEAS AND ARGUMENTS »

(CQ-ROLL CALL / GETTY / THE ATLANTIC)

1. “Sending our military to fight should be the hardest decision we make as a country.”

The hostilities between the U.S. and Iran earlier this month are the latest evidence that foreign policy should be shaped by statecraft, not whim, the 2020 Democratic candidate and U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren writes in this statement of her foreign-policy vision.

2. “It’s a hell of a gamble, and for what? To elect to the presidency a person with a proven record of accomplishing little for the causes he espouses, despite almost 32 years in the House and Senate?”

As Bernie Sanders surges in Iowa ahead of next week’s caucuses, David Frum questions what he sees as the senator’s strategy of rallying the kinds of voters “least committed to the political process” while alienating “the Americans most committed to it.”

3. “C-SPAN is so hot right now. And that’s a symptom of something gone deeply wrong.”

Among the odder developments of the Trump era, C-SPAN’s rise to primetime viewing is another sign of the worsening state of American political discourse, Kathy Gilsinan writes: Citizens with a functioning government wouldn’t have to tear themselves away from watching hours of congressional testimony every other week.