Power & Security, United States John Bolton is the Model of a Trump Sellout

The first time I ever saw John Bolton in person, he was sitting all alone.

In spring 2005, we were both in the State Department cafeteria and hoping for new jobs: He was a hawkish under secretary of state trying to become ambassador to the United Nations and I was a young kid looking for a break into foreign policy. As I sat getting advice from a friend of a friend of a friend at the department, who kept getting pulled away from our conversation by eager colleagues, my eyes kept drifting back to Mr. Bolton, reading papers undisturbed across the room.

That image has come back to me often over the last year. First, as Mr. Bolton, then the national security adviser, fell out of favor with Donald Trump; then when he failed to step forward in any meaningful way during January’s impeachment trial; and again this week as revelations from his book “The Room Where It Happened” rocked an already shellshocked Twittersphere.

At a moment when everyone is looking for heroes, Mr. Bolton’s lonely, self-interested crusade against Mr. Trump says volumes about where Washington finds itself.

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