In Paris today, Kerry chose to speak in French unprompted, but the press conference in which he refused a direct request to speak in French took place in Washington. Kerry was famously mocked for his Francophilia during the 2004 presidential race, and perhaps, in his mind, speaking French in the Treaty Room of the White House — the very seat of American power — would open him up to the same kind of right-wing derision more so than would speaking French in France, which is really just good manners. It’s a theory based on a small sample size, admittedly.
The other possibility is that Kerry, justifiably, just hates Canada.
And here is the video of Kerry refusing to speak French in Washington:
Whenever a Senate seat becomes available in Massachusetts, at least one Kennedy — any Kennedy, doesn’t really matter who — must, by law, at least consider running for it. With John Kerry’s seat opening up soon, Ted Kennedy Jr. has fulfilled this sacred duty, but today the Globe reports that he won’t run, partially because he lives in Connecticut, which is not the same state as Massachusetts. Ted Kennedy’s widow, Victoria Kennedy, has also been rumored as a possible candidate. When asked by the Hill on Friday about her intentions, she had no comment.
On one level, John McCain’s attack-dog approach to the possible nomination of UN ambassador Susan Rice as Secretary of State falls in line with the ex-maverick’s curmudgeonly stance on everything these days. Ever since losing the 2008 presidential contest (in reality, even somewhat before the actual election itself), McCain has retreated from his previously commendable independent streak and become an archetype of the modern Republican Party: obstinate and incoherent all at once.
Today, after Rice called for an in-person meeting with Republican senators McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Kelly Ayotte, all three officials emerged from the closed-doors conversation speaking as if with one voice:
“We are significantly troubled by many of the answers that we got, and some that we didn’t get,” Senator John McCain of Arizona said to reporters. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said, “Bottom line: I’m more concerned than I was before” — a sentiment echoed by Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire.
Their statements – coming after Ms. Rice’s conciliatory remarks during a meeting designed to mend fences with her three critics and smooth the way for her nomination as secretary of state if President Obama decides on her as the successor to Hillary Rodham Clinton – attested to the bitterness of the feud between the White House and Republicans over Benghazi.
Mr. Graham and Ms. Ayotte said that knowing what they know now, they would place a hold on Ms. Rice’s nomination if Mr. Obama selected her.
“I wouldn’t vote for anybody being nominated out of the Benghazi debacle until I had answers about what happened that I don’t have today,” Mr. Graham said.
Of course, Rice has rather consistently stated that she had simply repeated what she’d heard from the intelligence community. There’s very little actual substance for such a major controversy (fanned, in large part, by conservative outlets such as FOX News, as I covered yesterday).
That said, one factor that has been consistently under-covered during this ongoing saga is the choice President Obama must make for Secretary of State. All indications are that Susan Rice and John Kerry are the frontrunners. In that Elizabeth Warren just reclaimed Massachusetts’ second U.S. Senate seat from Republican Scott Brown (who remains popular in the state despite his defeat), moving Kerry to the executive cabinet means that yet another senatorial election would have to take place in the state.
Democrats are nervous (even if they won’t admit it publicly) about their chances. Despite being overwhelmingly liberal, Massachusetts may not have completely forgiven Martha Coakley for her abysmal campaign in the special election against Brown in 2009-2010. And aside from her, the Democratic field is fairly weak in the state. Brown, meanwhile, continues to enjoy relatively broad popularity and would be a natural (and well-known) contender for the seat.
Therefore, it is possible that John McCain (along with Graham, Ayotte, et al) should be given some credit for strategy here. By coming down so hard on Susan Rice, he may be hoping to force Obama’s hand by making Kerry the de facto lone candidate for Secretary of State and, therefore, opening up a potential Senate gain for Republicans in Massachusetts. Thus, instead of simply succumbing to his baser instincts to criticize everything Democrats do, he may only be guilty of succumbing to his party’s electoral ambitions: a distinction hardly worthy of sainthood, to be sure, but certainly well in line with the behavior of virtually everyone else in Congress.
Speculation is heating up that Massachusetts U.S. Senator John Kerry may be named to a Cabinet-level post in Obama’s second term: most likely either State or Defense. This has prompted a cascade of worries that the Democrats are making an unforced error and may lose a Senate seat if they can’t field an able candidate to replace Kerry in Massachusetts. (This is especially concerning given recently defeated Senator Scott Brown’s persistent popularity.) Dan Amira at New York Magazinemakes this point:
As everyone is aware, Kerry’s elevation to a cabinet post would open up a Senate seat in Massachusetts, providing the just-defeated Scott Brown with an opportunity to rejoin the Senate without even having to take on an incumbent. Why would Republicans do anything to dissuade Obama from setting this chain of events in motion? Do they have a personal vendetta against Brown, despite his unique position as the only Republican in the entire state of Massachusetts capable of winning a Senate seat? First, GOP senators blocked Elizabeth Warren’s confirmation to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, thus freeing her up for an ultimately successful run against Brown. And now the potential opposition to Kerry’s nomination, Brown’s only route back to the Senate for the foreseeable future.
Of course, any discussion of the hypothetical nomination’s bad political strategy can’t exclude President Obama, who should be hesitant about the idea of Secretary Kerry for the same reason that the GOP should be thrilled. Yes, the Democrats gained two seats last week, bumping their majority up to 55. According to the Washington Post, administration officials believe that the gains “provided a cushion that allowed them to consider Kerry’s departure from the chamber.”
But why risk diminishing the Democratic majority at all when there are plenty of other suitable would-be defense secretaries who aren’t sitting senators? Just to reward a friend? That probably won’t seem worthwhile if an important piece of legislation ever falls one vote short of passage and Scott Brown is the deciding no vote — an admittedly unlikely but hardly impossible scenario.
As the Democrats try to game out the risk of opening up the Kerry seat, the key factor to consider is context—that is, the circumstances in which the election to replace him would be held. Martha Coakley lost to Brown in 2010 in part because she was a deeply underwhelming candidate and because Brown offered a certain boy-next-door appeal. But she lost mainly because she was running in a low-turnout special election at a very improprituous moment for Democrats. Likewise, Warren knocked off Brown last week not just because she was a more feisty candidate than Coakley was, but because she was running in a general election where the state’s natural Democratic dominance would assert itself. This was what I kept hearing from veteran Democrats when I went up to Massachusetts to report on Warren’s midsummer struggles—even if she was having trouble finding her footing as a candidate, they said, one had to assume that she would benefit from high Democratic turnout in a presidential year. Yes, Brown would be able to peel off some of Barack Obama’s voters, but only so many.
And that’s just what happened. When Brown beat Coakley in 2010, 52 to 47 percent, there were barely more than 2.2 million votes cast. When Warren won 54 to 46 percent last week, there were more than 3.1 million votes cast. The contrast is particularly stark in the urban centers where Democrats rack up big margins. In Springfield, some 28,000 people voted in 2010 and Coakley netted about 7,000 votes. Last week, nearly twice as many voted there and Warren netted almost 25,000 votes. In Boston, she netted 120,000 votes where Coakley had netted less than half that amount. Turnout in the city was 65 percent—way above the 43 percent turnout in 2010, and higher even than the 62 percent who turned out for Obama’s first election.
What does this mean for a possible Kerry replacement? Well, on the one hand, that Democrats do need to worry about special elections, when the broader party base is less likely to turn out. But one also needs to keep in mind that the context for this special election (which would likely be held around June) would be much friendlier than the one in January 2010. Unless the tax and “fiscal cliff” negotiations go horribly awry for Obama, he and his party will be in a more favorable spot next spring than they were in late 2009 and early 2010. There is a chance that this time around, Patrick will not decree that his interim appointment to the open seat be forbidden from running in the special election, as he did in 2009 when he appointed longtime Kennedy aide Paul Kirk as interim after the senator’s death. This would allow the interim Democrat to run with a slight sheen of incumbency and, perhaps, even preclude a costly primary. Finally, there is the fact that the state electorate would be coming off a recent election where Warren and other Massachusetts Democrats drilled into the state’s many Democratic-leaning independent voters the importance of putting party over personality—even if voters liked Brown fine, they needed to consider the ramifications of giving Mitch McConnell another vote in the Senate. Presumably, this lesson would maintain a greater hold on voters next spring than it did in early 2010.
Regarding possible successors to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Erin Gloria Ryan at Jezebelcan’t resist a little snark:
Among the maybe-candidates are Massachusetts Senator ex-Presidential nominee John Kerry and former Utah Governor, ambassador to China, and too-reasonable-to-survive-the-primary Republican Presidential candidate Jon Huntsman. While Huntsman and Kerry have both demonstrated that they have foreign policy chops, the US hasn’t had a white male Secretary of State since 1997. Is America ready?
The Secretary of State job requires both tenacity and restraint, both of which may be difficult for a man’s unique chemical constitution. The male hormone testosterone, while responsible for such wondrous miracles as back hair and upper body strength, is also responsible for an increase in male aggression, anger, and even violence. Diplomacy is a difficult enough task without having to temper a man’s natural tendency to throw chairs through windows when angered by gridlock.
Further, it’s a well-known fact that men’s lack of intuition and emotional intelligence has translated into a troubling inability to cry under appropriate circumstances. War, death, and destruction are horrifying realities that Secretaries of State from Madeleine Albright to Condoleezza Rice have had to face, and an insufficient emotional response to tragedy will reflect poorly on our country. Do we want our allies to think we’re a bunch of callous jerks who are totally unmoved by the death of innocents?
Yes, Huntsman has been a career diplomat who has managed to avoid punching foreign leaders in the face out of anger during his work for four different Presidential administrations or inappropriately smiling during serious discussions because he’s excited that the Utah Utes football team won. And sure, John Kerry’s tenure as the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has been remarkably free of in-chamber shootings, but any testosterone-producing, low emotion man is a ticking time bomb. If either Jo(h)n ends up accepting an appointment as Secretar of State, let’s hope the Obama administration is smart enough to recommend he always travel with a trusted female chaperone who can help him navigate the volatile male hormonal landscape.
Speculation is heating up that Massachusetts U.S. Senator John Kerry