The FT’s Edward Luce was dispatched to lunch with John Bolton at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington earlier this month, and reports back from the front line. Luce has a lovely turn of phrase, and the article has some gorgeous moments – like this:
I am no believer in providence. But having booked lunch with John Bolton – perhaps the most hardline (now former) member of the Bush administration – I arrive to find Donald Rumsfeld seated at the next table, and have the fleeting thought that I might possess my own newspaper-reading guardian angel. Since I have arrived first I now have the advantage of watching Bolton, whose shock-white handlebar moustache gives him an unmistakeable Asterix-like appearance, cross the floor towards me. I wait to see what happens when he chances upon the former Secretary of Defense.
or this, when Luce and Bolton are discussing the latter’s book about his time at the UN, entitled Surrender is not an Option:
Feeling mildly intimidated, not least by Bolton’s warlike moustache, I venture an ill-timed joke: “Well of course, everyone will instantly think of that phrase ‘Cheese-eating surrender monkeys’,” I say, referring to the memorable line coined for the French after they had voted against the Iraq war at the UN. Bolton looks at me suspiciously. An awkward moment of silence follows.
But here is my favourite:
The waiter asks what we would like next. Bolton asks for a coffee – “just a coffee” – while I request a double espresso with separate hot milk. Bolton gives me another of his flinty looks. Feeling the need to explain, I say: “Ordinarily I’d order a large macchiato, but sometimes they don’t know what that is.” I realise at once that I am only digging myself deeper. “I wouldn’t know,” says Bolton after a pause. “I just get coffee.”
