Yesterday, former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick passed away at the age of eighty. Working on my UN book a few years ago, I asked for an interview and her ever-protective staff warned me that I could only stay for thirty minutes. When I sat down in her AEI office, I tried to rush a lot of questions into those thirty minutes, but she immediately put me at ease. What resulted was one of the most informative conversations I've ever enjoyed with one of the smartest, incisive and charming people I've ever had the good fortune to meet. I learned a lot about the UN and about her in the hour we spent together.

We spoke about all aspects of the UN, its motley membership, how the staff is chosen disproportionately to American and Western influence, how corruption can be dealt with and why the Secretary General's influence on the UN's agenda is not at all what the founders envisioned. (The SG was supposed to be an administrative officer, not a political power. Under Boutros-Boutros Ghali and the Clinton administration, the SG position began to evolve, and the process accelerated under Kofi Annan to where the SG is now thought of as what one-time SG Kurt Waldheim semi-jokingly said was "president of the world.") Most importantly, she was very firm about the fact that the UN should play no role in the decision of American presidents to employ military force. Amb. Kirkpatrick said, "There is no ground in the UN Charter or in precedent to support the position that the Security Council is the only source of legitimacy for the use of force...The importance of American sovereignty over American action is of the utmost importance." She explained that, "We must never agree that the US needs permission of the Security Council or any non-American entity to take action to protect our security. That is an irreducible responsibility of our government, which of course is responsible to the Congress and the American people as specified in our Constitution." That sort of clarity - of mind, principle and purpose - is all too rare among our leadership.

One of my best friends worked for Nixon, Reagan and Kirkpatrick. He was a Ph.D. student of hers at Georgetown University. He told me that of the three, she was the greatest intellect.

I never knew Margaret Thatcher. But sitting and talking with Jeane Kirkpatrick, and many times since, I couldn't help thinking that if Republicans were a lot smarter, she'd have been a great president of the United States. All of us should feel the loss of this powerful, clear mind.