Kerry has something else that makes him unusual in Washington—something that sets him distinctly apart from his immediate predecessor, and that serves him well as secretary of state: an indifference to his own political standing. Political calculations may have constrained the risks Hillary Clinton was willing to take. Kerry, in contrast, no longer needs to heed political consultants. Nor does he need to worry too much about what his detractors say. . . .One can understand how being freed from constant fund-raising and politicking would be liberating. Beyond that, though, his aides say that becoming secretary of state has allowed him to be himself in a way that being an electoral politician didn’t. As a presidential candidate, he had to downplay his obsession with foreign policy and his fluency in foreign languages, for fear that such things would play badly with voters; as secretary of state, he can freely leverage those qualities.
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But for all his blue-blooded superciliousness in public, Kerry can be engaging and down-to-earth in private. He drinks beer, loves the Boston Bruins, and plays ice hockey himself. (In a mark of his regular-guy bona fides, Kerry broke his nose a couple of years ago in a pickup game with friends; in a mark against those bona fides, the game was at one of his vacation homes, in Ketchum, Idaho, with the actor Tom Hanks and members of the Kennedy family.) On overseas flights, he dresses in jeans and an orange hoodie. When off the record, in relaxed settings, he is refreshingly direct, profane, and insightful, speaking bluntly about the limits of American power and caustically lamenting Washington’s growing paralysis and partisanship. He finishes sentences with phrases such as something like that or that’s about it or thanks, man. Toes tapping, head bobbing back and forth, he speaks with fervor and candor. His tenacity is palpable.. .
Current and former State Department officials praise Clinton personally—hailing her intelligence, work ethic, charisma, and voluminous reading—but some say that her inner circle of fiercely loyal aides isolated her within the department, and carefully managed her image. Richard Armitage, who served as Powell’s deputy secretary of state, praises Clinton but says she was poorly served by her aides. “My view is that she was pretty sheltered,” he told me. “They were not interpersonally pleasant, and they were very protective of her. You can get into a cocoon.” . . .Members of Clinton’s inner circle dispute this characterization, but some well-positioned observers believe that the possibility of a future presidential campaign caused Hillary to steer clear of playing the role of Middle East peace broker. . .
In the end, what cemented Kerry’s bond with Obama was less his diplomatic achievements than his ability to impersonate another tall, wealthy Massachusetts politician with good hair: Kerry served as Mitt Romney’s surrogate during weeks of preparation for the 2012 presidential debates. During mock debates, Kerry channeled Romney so effectively that, aides to both men say, he got under Obama’s skin. “I don’t think I missed one argument Romney made,” Kerry told me. By the end of debate season, Kerry had developed a new rapport with the president, according to their aides. Jen Psaki, having worked as a spokesperson for both men, says that despite their divergent backgrounds, Obama and Kerry share certain key traits: they eschew retail politics; they rely on a small coterie of aides; and they are fundamentally private people. Psaki says that while both men can turn on the charm when they need to work a crowd, they would “prefer to be in the Situation Room.” They derive more enjoyment, she says, from “grappling with tough global issues than political fund-raising or litigating yet another partisan fight on the Senate floor.”
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