"John Kerry is top prospect for next secretary of state" by Bryan Bender | Globe Staff, November 08, 2012
WASHINGTON — John Kerry’s prospects for secretary of state.... a foregone conclusion.
Not anymore.
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But closer to home, others wondered whether the potential political implications of plucking a leading Democratic lawmaker might prevent Kerry, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, from achieving what many close to him say is his dream job after losing the presidency in 2004. The Hill newspaper, for example, pointed out that Republican Senator Scott Brown, who was defeated by Democrat Elizabeth Warren, could make another bid for an open seat if the Bay State’s senior senator stepped down.
“You have some immediate political calculations you have to work through,” said Needham native P.J. Crowley, a retired Air Force colonel and former assistant secretary of state in the Obama administration who teaches at George Washington University. “Because of the change in the law there will be a special election. After going through a hard-fought campaign, Senator Brown would have to be a leading candidate to replace Senator Kerry.”
Nonetheless, Crowley acknowledged that after picking up a few more seats in the Senate on Tuesday, the Democrats have “a bit of a cushion” that could considerably reduce concerns about risking a traditionally safe Democratic seat. Meanwhile, Bay State political watchers stressed that Brown’s future electoral prospects — decidedly more remote after an 8-point loss to Warren — would be unlikely to affect the White House’s calculations in filling the Cabinet post....
Related: Many potential candidates if Mass. gets new Senate race
Speculation that Kerry could replace Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has said she will not serve in a second Obama administration, has swirled for months....
Getting ready for 2016?
For many, Kerry is seen as a logical choice to manage the nation’s thorniest foreign policy problems, from Iran to Afghanistan to China....
There are other leading candidates for secretary of state who have been widely mentioned, including the US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, and Obama’s national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, a Rhode Island native who served as chief of staff at the State Department during the Clinton administration.
See: Abandoning Obama
Crowley said that both Obama insiders have a tried and true path to the job. Rice could follow in the footsteps of former Clinton administration Secretary of State Madeliene Albright, who was also a former UN ambassador, while one of Donilon’s recent predecessors, Condoleezza Rice, was elevated to secretary of state in George W. Bush’s administration.
Related: The War Criminal Women of Wellesley
Of course, Rice is famous for saying no one could possibly have foreseen the "terrorist" attack of 9/11 after a government handbook and war game exercises that very day envisioned just such a scenario. Rice also signed off on torture as well as being a main conduit for the Iraq lies.
But hey, the world would be so much better if woman ran it, right?
But....
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That was before the Petraeus scandal.
"Kerry may be choice for secretary of defense; Security shuffle follows Petraeus’s departure" by Greg Miller and Karen DeYoung | Washington Post, November 13, 2012
WASHINGTON — President Obama is considering asking Senator John F. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, to serve as his next defense secretary, part of an extensive rearrangement of his national security team that will include a permanent replacement for former CIA director David Petraeus.
Although Kerry is thought to covet the job of secretary of state, senior administration officials familiar with transition planning said that nomination will almost certainly go to Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the United Nations.
That is going to be problematic after she spewed the administration and mouthpiece media lies about what happened in Libya.
John Brennan, Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, is a leading contender for the CIA job if he wants it, officials said. If Brennan goes ahead with his plan to leave government, Michael Morell, the agency’s acting director, is the prohibitive favorite to take over permanently. Officials cautioned that the White House discussions are in the early phases and that no decisions have been made....
It was unclear who would take Brennan’s counterterrorism job if he leaves government or moves to the CIA. He was the top contender to lead the agency when Obama was first elected in 2008, but he withdrew under criticism, which he deemed unfair, of his role in intelligence excesses under the administration of George W. Bush.
Although that challenge is now seen as behind him, officials said he has not indicated whether he would like to be considered again to head the agency where he spent 25 years.
Michael Vickers, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, also has been mentioned as a candidate for CIA director....
Yeah, Vickers would be a great pick and a real change in direction.
Petraeus’s resignation last week after revelations of an extramarital
affair have complicated what was already an intricate puzzle to
reassemble the administration’s national security and diplomatic pieces
for Obama’s second term.
I would like to remind all those who are giddy about Obama's reelection that the history of U.S. presidencies is one where the second term often results in the airing of dirty laundry in the form of scandal and corruption. Another reason Hitlery is getting out?
The process has become further complicated by congressional ire over not being told that Petraeus was under FBI investigation, on top of what will probably be contentious closed-door hearings this week over administration actions surrounding the attack on the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, in September.
Rice, one of an inner circle of aides who have been with Obama since his first presidential campaign in 2007, is under particular fire over the Benghazi incident, in which the US ambassador and three other Americans were killed.
Some Republican lawmakers have suggested that she was part of what they suspect was an initial, election-related attempt to portray the attack as a peaceful demonstration that turned violent, rather than what the administration now acknowledges was an organized terrorist assault.
Rice’s description, days after the attack, of a protest gone wrong was either intentionally misleading or incompetent, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said Sunday. Rice, he said, ‘‘would have an incredibly difficult time’’ winning Senate confirmation as secretary of state.
But several White House officials said Obama is prepared to dig in his heels over her nomination to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton....
On this he is willing to fight?
Under consideration for Rice’s job at the United Nations, as is Samantha Power, the National Security Council’s senior director for multilateral affairs and human rights....
Interesting because Power once called Hillary Clinton a monster (before she had to apologize), and was all for smashing Libya (along with Rice). Before that she was considered the voice of conscience by the elite agenda-pushers that publish newspapers due to her work regarding genocide in Africa. I wonder how loudly she is speaking out against drone missile strikes.
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Also see: Support, surprise greet report on John Kerry
Kerry should stay put
UPDATES:
"Obama rips critics of UN ambassador" by Matt Viser | Globe Staff, November 14, 2012
WASHINGTON — President Obama tenaciously defended Ambassador Susan Rice on Wednesday, using his first postelection news conference to label as “outrageous” any Republican charges that the diplomat misled the American public after the attack on a US Consulate in Libya on Sept. 11.
Yeah, it's outrageous that the U.S. government would be charged with lying.
Much of the press conference, his first in five months, centered on coming negotiations with Congress to avoid a fiscal maelstrom of mandated tax increases and budget cuts at the end of the year. Obama also renewed a call for immigration reform – and said conversations were already underway with congressional leaders — but said legislation addressing climate change would be much more difficult.
The more things "change," the more the New World Order agenda is advanced.
The 52-minute conference displayed an assertive, confident president following his resounding reelection win over Mitt Romney just eight days earlier and forecast the types of battles that would be fought with Congress over the next few weeks....
Why wouldn't he be? He green-lighted Israel's recent war-criminal actions in Gaza so we all know he cut a deal to win Israel's approval for reselection.
The White House is now confronted with the decision over whether to expend political capital on pushing for Rice or whether they would try to nominate Kerry, who would likely have a much easier path to confirmation....
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Related: John Kerry should be secretary of state
Yup, poor Susan Rice, 'eh?
"Susan Rice made Benghazi comments while filling in for Clinton" by Mark Landler | New York Times, November 18, 2012
WASHINGTON — Susan E. Rice was playing stand-in on Sept. 16 when she appeared on all five Sunday news programs, a few days after the deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton would have been the White House’s logical choice to discuss the chaotic events. But administration officials said she was drained after a week consoling the families of those who died, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
Then consoling the citizens of Gaza is going to kill her. Must be why they need a new SecofState.
And Clinton steers clear of the Sunday shows anyway.
Who wants to wade in bullshit upon a Sunday morning anyway? Years ago the Sunday shows meant every Sunday was Super Sunday to me; however, that was a long, long time ago. Now I never watch them.
So instead, Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, delivered her now-famous account of the episode. Reciting talking points supplied by intelligence agencies, she said that the Benghazi siege appeared to be a spontaneous protest rather than a premeditated terrorist attack. Within days, Republicans in Congress were calling for her head.
In her sure-footed ascent of the foreign-policy ladder, Rice has rarely shrunk from a fight. But now that she appears poised to claim the top rung — White House aides say she is President Obama’s favored candidate for secretary of state — this sharp-tongued, self-confident diplomat finds herself in the middle of a feud in which she is largely a bystander.
‘‘Susan had a reputation, fairly or not, as someone who could run a little hot and shoot from the hip,’’ said John Norris, a foreign-policy specialist at the Center for American Progress. ‘‘If someone had told me that the biggest knock on her was going to be that she too slavishly followed the talking points on Benghazi, I would have been shocked.’’
At the UN, and in posts in the Clinton White House, Rice, who turned 48 on Saturday, has earned a reputation as a blunt advocate, relentless on issues like pressuring the regime in Sudan or intervening in Libya to prevent a slaughter by Moammar Khadafy.
And then she will stand up and veto resolutions against Israel.
She was a Rhodes scholar, has degrees from Stanford and Oxford, a Rolodex of contacts, and a relationship with Obama sealed during his 2008 campaign. So her ascension to lead the State Department would be less a blow for diversity — she would, after all, be the second black woman named Rice to hold the job — than the natural capstone to a fast-track career.
Yet the firestorm over Benghazi raises more basic questions: Is Rice the best candidate to succeed Clinton as the nation’s chief diplomat? Does she have the diplomatic finesse to handle thorny problems in the Middle East? And even if Obama gets the votes for her confirmation, has the episode so tainted her that it would be hard for her to thrive in the job?
Rice’s supporters say she has compiled a solid record at the United Nations, winning the passage of resolutions that impose strict sanctions on Iran and North Korea.
Why must all AmeriKa's U.N. ambassadors be slaves to Israel?
Diplomats praise her for reengaging with the institution after deep strains during the George W. Bush administration. But even those who back her tend to emphasize factors like her ties to Obama, an advantage that Clinton, for all her celebrity, did not have.
‘‘Given that he’s probably the most withholding president on foreign policy since Nixon, if anyone can get him to delegate, not dominate, it’s Rice,’’ said Aaron David Miller, a longtime Middle East negotiator now at the Woodrow Wilson Center. ‘‘That would be good for her, and for our foreign policy.’’
While some in the State Department are wary of her, recalling her stormy tenure as a thirtysomething assistant secretary for African affairs during the Clinton administration, Rice has a core of support among Obama’s aides, particularly those who worked with her on the 2008 campaign.
They insist that Benghazi will not derail her chances. Some analysts said Obama’s defense of her at a news conference last week was so impassioned that he had left himself little room to put forward an alternative, like Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts.
Still, other longtime Washington observers question if Obama would risk a battle over his secretary of state when he needs to cut a deal with Republicans on the budget and taxes....
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Also see: Rice got report that was wrong, CIA says
Nothing has changed in a dozen years, has it?
