Editorial
The Guardian,
Friday 21 December 2012 21.10 GMT
In 2004, Senator John Kerry proved not to be ideal US presidential timber. But the Massachusetts grandee is a political heavyweight nevertheless. And in three other key respects he is an excellent nominee to succeed Hillary Clinton as America’s secretary of state. First, Mr Kerry knows the world’s trouble spots, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. As chairman of the senate foreign relations committee from 2009, he will go to Foggy Bottom with the facts on some of America’s most difficult strategic engagements already at his fingertips. Second, Mr Kerry is that rare bird in US politics: a natural cosmopolitan. A French speaker, married to a colonial Mozambique-born multimillionaire wife, he knows instinctively how to speak softly even while carrying Washington’s big stick. Finally, Mr Kerry knows first-hand about the realities of war. As a young man he fought in Vietnam and won medals for his bravery, returning to the US to become a prominent and intensely credible critic of the war. For this audacity, he was monstered in 2004 by the Republicans of George Bush (a rich draft dodger who talked tough). Few people have had their service so shamefully traduced as Mr Kerry at the hands of Karl Rove’s swift-boat character assassination tactics eight years ago. That episode remains one of the morally darkest acts of modern American election campaigning. This would be a perfect moment for Republican senators to apologi
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se to Mr Kerry at his confirmation hearings. But don’t hold your breath.
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