FIRST the President picks his people, then he waits months while the Senate grills them, to see if they will allow him his choice.

There is nothing in British government quite like it, and more’s the pity. It is not just the drama of the solitary figure sitting in front of a microphone, faced by a half-circle of nearly 20 senators. The hours of interrogation, playing to the cameras in the senators’ home states, take on the air of a trial.

But the spectacle is also one of the most inspiring constructions of the US Constitution: an often bruising reminder of Congress’s ability to circumscribe the executive. In the case of John Bolton, President Bush’s extravagantly controversial choice for US Ambassador to the United Nations, the Senate’s approval looks all but certain.

The Foreign Relations Committee is expected to vote today on party lines: ten Republicans and eight Democrats. The only one in doubt has been Lincoln Chafee, a moderate Republican from Rhode Island, who is up for re-election next year. But everything Chafee has said in the past week gives the sense that he will back Bolton.

Some questions were predictable. The panel confronted Bolton with past statements expressing scepticism — to put it mildly — of the UN’s value. On these points of ideology, Bolton acquitted himself well, and with passion. That was then, he said, and the remarks could not be separated from the rows of that time. Now, he had every respect for the institution and intended to work vigorously with it. Indeed, he said so much to this effect that he may have written himself a brief — even a personality — that is rather different from what he intended.

The tens of thousands of his words to the Senate, transcribed and poured out instantly on to the world’s newswires, now define the job he will do.

In his testimony, this bore no resemblance to John Bolton, the prime hawk and arch conservative of popular caricature. Since his nomination, he has become a favourite of the world’s cartoonists, his reputation (“human scum”, as North Korea put it), and uniquely recognisable thick white moustache and sandy hair making him an irrestible subject. In striving to argue against this fearsome image, he has fashioned another, which would be bound to shape his style as US ambassador.

The more surprising tack from senators was the charge that he had bullied subordinates. This gave him more trouble. The accusation was that on several occasions, when intelligence agents or other officials gave him information he did not like, he rejected it, and sought to have them demoted.

He did not give an answer to this which made him seem like an open-minded or indeed pleasant person with whom to work. But he did give a solid account of his behaviour, saying that there were personality clashes, and he wanted the people in question moved because the friction was distracting.

Nor, in the US, does the accusation have quite the bitter resonance that it would in Britain, where the question of whether the Government distorted intelligence from Iraq has been much more inflammatory.

It is not as if this question is not asked in the US. The senators certainly challenged Bolton on whether he was the kind of person who would do this.

But Bush never made as much of Iraq’s supposed weapons in justifying the war as did Tony Blair. The failure to find them has caused him less trouble than it has Blair. In New York, if Bolton gets there, the most powerful factor determining the tone of his tenure will be events. North Korea’s new belligerence in the past few weeks plays to his passions. So, very likely, do the challenges to Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary- General, over the Iraqi Oil-for-Food scandal. But the impossibility of the US mounting a military assault on Iran is a constraint on them.

And the likelihood that the UN will spend the coming months, if not years, debating the expansion of the Security Council should surely be a dampener on any surge of adrenalin he might have.

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