Some things never change! Sigh.

[Mass]

Googling around this morning, I found this pearl.

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_spine/archive/2008/10/08/why-kerry-shouldn-t-and-won-t-be-secretary-of-state.aspx

Does Marty Peretz feel so threatened that he is starting an anti-Kerry campaign when everybody should focus on getting Obama elected?

[beachmom]

1. Wow, that was an awful read.

If all someone read was TNR, they would positively hate Kerry as an unlikeable jerk. Fortunately, we know these articles say far more about them than Kerry.

In fact, I don't know who they are talking about. We all know that Kerry was favorable toward Obama, with a ton of his staffers and donors flocking to Obama, throughout 2007. We also know that with the selection of Joe Biden, Kerry has many options besides SoS, like Chairman of the SFRC. With Teddy ill, and that chairmanship in the mix, I wouldn't bet that Kerry definitely wants SoS. Honestly, I would love to seem him as Attorney General to prosecute the thugs on Wall Street that caused this financial crisis.

If I were to speculate, I think any conversation about what would happen in case Obama won, was far more fluid than Kerry INSISTING on one position. I don't see their relationship like that (the way it is described in TNR, it is like some kind of blackmail, which I simply do not think is how these things work). Plus I did go through my c-span tape of the night of Kerry's DNC speech, and watched after Biden's speech when in the corner of your screen, you can see Obama greet Kerry. They looked like friends to me, very comfortable. I just don't see Kerry insisting on something, but rather offering his services as a patriot. I think no matter what Kerry does, he will be invited frequently to the White House for dinner.

Edit: I forgot another moment, on the Senate floor during the bailout vote. Kerry and Obama whispered in each other's ears (OBVIOUSLY, very confidential information), and once done, Obama continued to schmooze with several Senators, including a long conversation with Hillary Clinton. The point is that Obama didn't need to schmooze with Kerry -- it was obvious that they are on the same page and are quite close.

Second Edit: Surely the press notices things like this, and yet this story of the closeness of Obama & Kerry has not been told. I am fine with that, but I do find it curious that nobody writes about it, since it IS interesting.

[karynnj]

4. I'm kind of glad they don't write about it

The relationship is real and it doesn't matter if it is obvious now. In fact, it is more important to have the Clintons getting credit when they do things because that might be needed to keep them from feeling "hurt" and acting in a counterproductive way. The reality is that Obama knows exactly who was there for him. I also heard a lot of Kerry echoes in both debates, which shows that he and Kerry are on the same page for many things.

I agree with you that Kerry will likely be invited to both informal decision meeting and to dinner at the White House. The latter is even more likely as not only does Obama appear to like Kerry, Michell Obama and Teresa Heinz Kerry are clearly friends. (My oldest daughter loved the glimpses of them on the Wednesday at the convention - saying that the only thing that would have made it look more like two long time friends talking was wine glasses.)

As you said, Kerry will be a strong voice on foreign policy in any position. (and on other issues.) I would imagine the only way Kerry would take the SoS job is if Obama made the case to him that he was uniquely qualified to do things Obama wants done and they match things Kerry has spoken of since the 1970s - on both global warming and foreign policy.

[karynnj]

2. The article shows its own lack of gravitas and doesn't even make sense

He claims that anonymous people say that Kerry has told them that he endorsed for the promise of being Secretary of State. Then he says Obama was too savvy to take the bait. He has no proof for either statement.

His other point that there would be a fight if Kerry were nominated is ridiculous. Ascroft was easily confirmed - and he was more of a far right figure than Kerry is a left one. I seriously doubt that anyone on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would vote against his nomination. There are simply no grounds to do so. I also think the rest of the Senate like Kerry more than Peretz does -and he has no vote. Peretz ignores the Democrats may have up to 60 Senators and I seriously doubt ANY Democrat would vote against the clear choice of the Democratic electorate in 2004. (If there are less than 60 Senators, there are people like Snowe and Lugar who clearly like Kerry.) It is very rare that anyone is not confirmed for a Cabinet position.

The few comments there show people are not buying it. I liked this one:

""The fact is that a campaign is a campaign. It's about positioning the candidate within the bounds of truthfulness about how he will govern. But it is not about governing."

Yes, I know you hope that Obama will govern as Lieberman."

In reality, that may be the truth - Peretz, in addition to a complete inexplicable hatred of Kerry, wants a Leiberman like foreign policy in its full neocon glory, and there is no one more likely to push in the opposite direction than Kerry.

[TayTay]

3. TNR contradicts itself

From:The New Republic
Swift Return by Jason Zengerle
The strange resurrection of John Kerry.
Post Date Wednesday, September 10, 2008
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=0185b192-e74f-41cc-a687-f0d49f2ee039

What was most remarkable about Kerry's endorsement, however, was not the endorsement itself but the run-up to it. After being courted by Obama and Clinton for nearly a year, Kerry finally decided, a few days after Christmas, to offer his endorsement to Obama. But Obama did not want it--at least, not at that moment. The Obama campaign (rightly, as it turned out) believed that it was already on its way to winning the Iowa caucus on January 3; it also (wrongly) believed that it would win the New Hampshire primary five days later. As Kerry later recalled for me, "We just agreed that ... we should let it have its own energy, not change that dynamic, and sort of hold it until it might be needed." And so, just before midnight on January 8, hours after getting pole- axed by Clinton in New Hampshire, Obama placed a call to Kerry to say he needed that endorsement now--that is, if Kerry was still willing to give it.

It's a general rule in politics that you don't keep endorsements in your back pocket, lest circumstances--and offers--change. In the case of an endorsement from Kerry, that rule would seem particularly apt. (A senior Clinton adviser says that, had Kerry offered Hillary his endorsement in late December, she would have announced it immediately; her campaign coveted Kerry's organized support in Iowa and New Hampshire, both of which he won in 2004.) Fair or not, Kerry has been dogged by a reputation for flip-flopping since even before the Bush campaign made it a central line of attack in his presidential run. For years, Democrats and pundits have complained that he lacks political backbone and that he can't be counted on when the chips are down. And, as Kerry himself realized, the chips were definitely down for Obama after New Hampshire. "The Hillary people, they were convinced that it was over--they'd punctured the balloon and it was done," Kerry says. "They'd won the big one, ... and they were going to win the rest of the states."

Given all this, any politician in Kerry's shoes that night might have been forgiven for telling Obama that he'd had some second thoughts, that (to borrow a phrase) he was for the endorsement before he was against it. But when Obama called, Kerry was ready with his answer. "Barack said, 'Do you still want to go down to South Carolina?'" Kerry recalls. "I said, 'Absolutely, let's go.'"

Since making his gutsy decision to endorse, Kerry has emerged as a powerful surrogate for Obama, regularly going to bat for him on the stump and on the TV talk shows, where he hews closely to the Obama campaign's talking points and offers criticism of John McCain that's far more withering than anything Obama himself could get away with. "John McCain is still stuck on the low-road express," Kerry said at a recent campaign event. "He doesn't get it. He's even dangerous, I think, for the direction of this country."