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Usually the nomination of an ambassador to the United Nations goes by with a yawn and a quick story buried somewhere near the back of a newspaper’s national section. But that was before John Bolton, the mustachioed former undersecretary of State who seems to love mixing his diplomacy with a little Jerry Springer-esque enthusiasm. He’s on record as a vocal critic of the very institution he’s supposed to work at. He’s been accused of using NSA surveillance data against fellow State Department officals. He’s tried to force intelligence analysts to fit their data to his own preconceived opinions, verbally abusing and threatening those who don’t agree with him. And there was that thing where he supposedly chased an American aid worker through the halls of a Russian hotel, stopping only to pound on her door and scream threats.

Obviously this is a guy well-suited to the intricacies of diplomacy. If Kofi Annan gets out of line, maybe Bolton can hurl a stapler at his head.

The newest Bolton revelations, while not quite as flamboyant as hunting down women in hotel corridors, show a loose cannon who had to almost-literally be muzzled by his superiors at the State Department. According to testimony by Lawrence S. Wilkerson, a former aide to Colin Powell, Bolton would habitually make public statements that were either too extreme or factually suspect. This led to unique restrictions that were placed on Bolton by deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage:

“Therefore, the deputy made a decision, and communicated that decision to me, that John Bolton would not give any testimony, nor would he give any speech, that wasn’t cleared first by Rich,” Mr. Wilkerson said, according to a transcript of an hourlong interview with members of the committee staff last Thursday.

In an e-mail message on Monday, Mr. Wilkerson said of the restrictions imposed on Mr. Bolton that “if anything, they got more stringent” as time went on. “No one else was subjected to these tight restrictions,” he said.

Wilkerson also notes times where Bolton exceeded his authority, especially when dealing with officials of the — you guessed it — United Nations.

Mr. Wilkerson said that Mr. Bolton had been a major cause of tension and resentment at the highest levels of the State Department because of his temperament, his treatment of subordinates and the fact that he had “overstepped his bounds” on a number of occasions, including what Mr. Wilkerson called “his moves and gyrations” aimed at preventing Mohamed ElBaradei from being reappointed as the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear monitoring body.

“Now, what do I mean by that?” Mr. Wilkerson said. “I mean, going out of his way to bad-mouth him, to make sure that everybody knew that the maximum power of the United States would be brought to bear against them if he were brought back in,” Mr. Wilkerson said of Mr. Bolton’s approach to Dr. ElBaradei.

With Bolton’s nomination hearing scheduled for Thursday, it will be interesting to see if the tide of bad ink (and it’s an awfully strong tide) will convince a few Republicans to break ranks and vote against him. If the intention is to send a bully into the United Nations, a person who has a greater-than-average chance of further souring foreign opinion against the United States, then he’s a great choice. But for anyone who considers diplomacy to be something more than raw intimidation, a better candidate can be found.