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John McCain was famously booed at this convention last year. By my count, McCain has been booed at least four -- maybe five -- times this year. The audience booed him when he spoke yesterday. They boo him whenever a speaker mentions his name.

They booed McCain when former U.N. ambassador, conservative rock-star and future secretary of state John Bolton spoke to the convention this afternoon.

"Given the challenges we face ahead," Bolton said, "we need to determine where we stand this presidential election. He have some hard choices. But it's clear that John McCain is going to be the Republican nominee..."

BOOOOO! BOOOOOOOOOO!

"Now, now... Now, now..."

Bolton made clear that he is no fan of McCain's stands on many issues. McCain yesterday pointed out that he first attended CPAC in 1975. "Coincidentally," Bolton said, "that was my first CPAC, too. I was a young lawyer at the time, working on a lawsuit against the 1974 campaign finance reform law that would eventually become Buckley v. Valeo."

That aside, Bolton's case for McCain is straightforward. McCain is unlikely to fold on U.S. participation in the International Criminal Court, he's likely to hold fast in opposition to the Law of the Sea Treaty, and he's likely to take a firm stand against Iran and North Korea's proliferation of nuclear weapons. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are all but guaranteed to cave on all four.

To conservatives who question whether to stay home in November, Bolton suggested they think carefully about their decision. "There's an argument that four years in the opposition would show just how bad a Clinton or an Obama really is," Bolton said. "But that view is uncomfortably close to Vladimir Lenin's view that 'worse is better.' I don't think conservatives want embrace a doctrine held by Lenin. And it's certainly not a doctrine to embrace when the country is at war."

"Worse is not better. Worse is worse."

Bolton's bottom line: Tactical domestic political considerations should not trump national security.

Bolton had more to say. He believes that the Bush administration simply does not have the political capital to attack Iran, especially not after the December National Intelligence Estimate, and despite the fact that Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell essentially repudiated the document last week.

Bolton also believes the U.S. government should come clean about what those Israeli jets blew up in the Syrian desert last year. "By God, we're entitled to know whether the North Koreans and Syrians were building a nuclear facility on the banks of the Euphrates!"

And Bolton was absolutely steadfast in his belief that the United States must not remove North Korea from the list of state-sponsors of terrorism. He pointed out that the North Koreans have never fully accounted for the dozens of Japanese they kidnapped in the '70s and '80s. "That isn't just state-sponsored terrorism, that's state terrorism." Bolton warned that President Bush signs off on a State Department proposal to remove North Korea from the list, "he will leave office with his reputation among conservatives irreparably damaged."

When Clinton and Obama talk about the mess the next president will inherit from George W. Bush, those aren't the messes they mean. But there can be little doubt that America's prestige in the world has been diminished by poor decision making by the president and the perfidy of the State Department. The next president needs to make sure America's foreign service and intelligence agencies work for him, not the other way around.