Jeane Kirkpatrick

As indicated in a Featured Article inOpinionJournal Jeane Kirkpatrick, who died yesterday at 80, was that rare thing--a public intellectual and a public figure. She excelled at both.

She died at a particularly inopportune time. If Bolton can't be confirmed as UN Ambassador, then Jeane Kirkpatrick is the only other person I think that could have done the job that needs to be done to straighten out the UN

Ms. Kirkpatrick is known to the public at large because Ronald Reagan, after defeating Jimmy Carter for the Presidency in 1980, appointed her U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. It is worth mentioning in this context that earlier this week Senate Democrats succeeded finally in driving John Bolton from the U.N. ambassadorship. The mind's eye recalls the televised image in the early 1980s of Ambassador Kirkpatrick, a Democrat then, seated at the U.N. Security Council table and publicly defending U.S. interests against the Soviet Union with an articulate, no-nonsense bluntness that makes Mr. Bolton sound like Little Bo-Peep by comparison. That style--American interests made perfectly clear--will be missed.