Official Washington can be filled with moments of official awkwardness. And this past week was filled with multiple instances of slips of the tongue, or at least Ciceronian rhetoric that could have been crafted and executed in a slightly better fashion.

Starting with another pitched confirmation battle, President Bush’s nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, the sartorially impaired diplomatic guru John Bolton (left), faced some intense scrutiny from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The Bush administration has been doing all it can to support Bolton, who received some glowing references from five former secretaries of State along with a hodgepodge of other Cabinetry and other senior officials in governmentalia. The most recent spate of endorsements was designed to undercut Senate Democrats, who had managed to hold up the committee vote.

For their part, Democrats seized on various statements that Bolton had previously made about the United Nations, including his dismissive comment at a Federalist Society Forum: “If the UN secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference,” as well as a 1994 statement: “There is not such thing as the United Nations.” California Sen. Barbara Boxer, providing material for a future Amy Poeler imitation, chided Bolton, saying “It’s hard for me to know why you’d want to work at an institution that you said didn’t even exist.” Metaphor, Barbara. They’re literally called metaphors.