John Bolton is doing something different.
On Thursday, the former ambassador to the United Nations announced that he would not seek the Republican nomination for the presidency. In doing so, he became the first prospective GOP candidate for 2016 to decide not to run, after actively exploring a bid for the White House.
In a web video, Bolton said: “Looking forward, I have decided not to seek the Republican nomination for president.”
The former State Department official added: “I believe I can make the strongest contribution to our future by continuing as a clear and consistent advocate for a strong Reaganite foreign policy that values peace through strength.”
Bolton has never been elected to office and was never confirmed as UN ambassador after being nominated by George W Bush in 2005. However, his 2016 campaign was widely considered an effort to push his aggressive foreign policy views in a Republican party that some neoconservatives fear is becoming more isolationist.
Although he received attention in recent weeks for a March op-ed in the New York Times in which he called for the US to bomb Iran, Bolton had become less of a factor in the Republican debate as candidates with similar foreign policy views, such as Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, emerged in a field that is still likely to be nearly 20-strong.
In deciding not to run, Bolton has made it all the more likely that there will be yet another clean-shaven president in the White House. The last commander-in-chief with facial hair, the mustachioed William Howard Taft, lost his bid for re-election in 1913. No contender with a hirsute face has even gained a party’s nomination since the Republican Thomas Dewey in 1948.
Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon and darling of the right who announced his candidacy for the White House this month, has a goatee.
