The All-American - John Kerry

John Kerry surprised a lot of people when he endorsed Barack Obama for president in early 2008. Kerry was a longtime friend of Obama’s chief rival, Hillary Clinton. He had served in the Senate for a quarter-century and had built a reputation as a cautious, incremental figure — like Clinton herself. But for Kerry the time had come for a decisive break with the past. “I felt very strongly we needed a new narrative for the country,” he told me during a long conversation last fall.

In fact, Kerry saw the world very much the way Obama did. As a candidate, Obama distinguished himself not only from George W. Bush but also from Clinton by advocating a new foreign policy of “engagement.” He vowed that as president he would meet the leaders of Iran and Syria and other enemies without preconditions, which Clinton deemed “naïve.” Kerry was already practicing engagement: as a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a man who had come within a whisker of being elected president, Kerry had been meeting with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and forming close relationships with autocratic as well as democratic leaders around the world.

When Obama won, Kerry dearly hoped to be named secretary of state, a job for which he felt supremely qualified. But Obama, to almost everyone’s surprise, picked Clinton instead. Kerry is enough of a creature of Washington to understand that no one has a lock on jobs like that, but the setback still stung. Baring your wounds, however, is against Kerry’s nature. “It’s a great job,” he says stoically. “But I already have a great job.”

That actually appears to be true. Kerry now practices his brand of diplomacy as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee but also, remarkably, as a kind of ex-officio member of Obama’s national security team, which has dispatched him to face one crisis after another in danger zones like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan. Kerry’s willingness to go anywhere he is needed, and stay as long as needed, has won him Obama’s gratitude. Clinton has said that she will step down should Obama have a second term. And then Kerry may finally get his wish. “There’s no obvious competition for No. 1,” says Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/magazine/john-kerry-our-man-in-kabul.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha210

French? Good article.

with his success in serving the country. Those Rovian PIGS lied and did this country a great disservice. Which of course, negates all the "sacrifices" they themselves gave to their country. But, then again, they don't need the VA, their rich repug buddies took care of them.

...with its emphasis on celebrity, on simple narratives, on so-called winners and losers, it is too easy to overlook the ways someone can make a difference in a relatively quiet way.