Bolton Holds Onto His Hat

Former UN Ambassador John R. Bolton ruled out a bid for the Republican presidential nomination in an interview on Fox News on Tuesday evening.

“I kept coming to the conclusion that I couldn’t possibly win the nomination,” Bolton told Fox News host Greta Van Susteren. Bolton, who wants to see a much more vigorous discussion of foreign policy in the presidential campaign, said that he believed he could have raised enough money to wage a viable campaign, but that his signature issue — national security — wasn’t regarded by most political analysts and pundits as a winning issue in 2012.

The 62-year-old Bolton, who had assembled little in the way of a campaign infrastructure and hadn’t even established a presidential exploratory committee prior to Tuesday’s announcement, said he disagreed with that analysis.

“Don’t get me wrong: I would love to be president,” said Bolton.  “But I didn’t get into this because of a desire to hold the office. I did it because I was, and remain, concerned that our nation is sleep-walking into crises internationally.”