John Kerry
Related: About this forumLong, great NYorker' s piece about JK...
Enjoy.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/21/negotiating-the-whirlwind
The New Yorker
DECEMBER 21, 2015
BY DAVID REMNICK
John Kerry, the sixty-eighth Secretary of State of the United States, was born to a temperament of wintry rectitude. He is descended from the Winthrops, who helped found the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the Forbeses, a Brahmin clan that made its money in railways and in exporting tea, silver, and opium to China. His father was a diplomat. Kerry attended St. Paul’s and Yale (where he was in Skull and Bones) and, as a naval officer in Vietnam, earned three Purple Hearts, the Bronze Star, and the Silver Star. He dated Jacqueline Kennedy’s half-sister, sailed with J.F.K., and married twice into substantial fortunes. Despite the codes of his class, however, Kerry was never entirely subtle about his ambitions. When he was in prep school, his classmates used to play “Hail to the Chief” to him on the kazoo.
In 2004, when Kerry lost the Presidential race to George W. Bush, who is widely considered the worst President of the modern era, he refused to challenge the results, despite his suspicion that in certain states, particularly Ohio, where the Electoral College count hinged, proxies for Bush had rigged many voting machines. But he could not suffer the defeat in complete silence. He was outraged that Bush, who had won a stateside berth in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War, used campaign surrogates, the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, to slime his military record. He was furious, too, at Robert Shrum, his chief strategist, and other campaign advisers who had restrained him from hitting back.
“For a long period, after 2004, every time he even half fell asleep all he saw was voting machines in the state of Ohio,” Mike Barnicle, a close friend of Kerry’s and a former columnist for the BostonGlobe, told me. This summer, Barnicle spent time with Kerry on Nantucket, where Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz, have a house on the water and a seventy-six-foot, seven-million-dollar sailboat called Isabel. “We were sitting in the bow,” Barnicle recalled, “and we were talking about a bunch of different things—about Iran, about what the President of Iran was like—and I said, ‘Other than not being President, this is pretty good.’ There was a security boat sailing off to the side of us. Then he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, I realize how badly Shrum screwed me.’ ”
A few weeks ago, between Kerry’s trips to Europe and the Middle East, I had dinner with Kerry and Heinz at their house in Georgetown, a twenty-three-room mansion decorated with Early American portraits, Dutch still-lifes, and an amiable yellow Labrador retriever named Ben. (The Lab has the Twitter handle @DiploMutt.) I asked Kerry how long he carried around a sense of anger and resentment.
“I didn’t carry it,” he insisted. “I didn’t. I didn’t. My wife was mad at me that I didn’t carry it longer.”
From across the table, Teresa Heinz said, “I’m still carrying it.”
The Secretary of State looked up from his halibut. An ill wind of panic swept the oblong plain of his face. From the thick thatch of gray hair to the improbably long and thrusting chin, Kerry’s visage is immense and, in its implacable resting expression, resembles one of the monolithic heads that rise from the loam of Easter Island.
“Well, I’m not,” Kerry said.
His gaze turned to his wife, wordlessly imploring her to keep quiet. Heinz is seventy-seven, five years older than her husband, and, in 2013, she suffered a seizure that she has attributed to an earlier concussion “that was not properly treated at all.” It’s not easy for her to get around, and she appears infrequently at public events, but she spoke clearly and ardently throughout the evening, much as she had during the 2004 campaign.
She was not quite done. “I knew from looking at the . . .”
Kerry uses many terms of endearment for his wife; now he called her by the telegraphic “T.”
“T, let’s not go . . .” he said gently.
As she tried to speak again, he shut it down.
“T, T, we’re not . . . I didn’t want to spend time there,” he said. “I just consciously did not spend time there, and I moved on, and I moved on as rapidly as . . . It’s over. It’s behind me. . . . I could have done some things a little bit differently. We didn’t. But I’m not going to feel regret the rest of my life.”
In early 2013, after twenty-eight years in the Senate, Kerry succeeded Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. He is seventy-two, and this is almost surely his last high-ranking job as a public official. As he put it to me, “I have fourteen months left on the clock.” He has already made his historical mark by acting as the Obama Administration’s chief negotiator in the nuclear talks with Iran. That deal, which is designed to prevent Iran from building an atomic weapon and sparking a nuclear arms race throughout the Middle East, was signed two months ago. But it was never a foregone conclusion. This time last year, the White House was running “Plan B” meetings about what steps to take—deeper sanctions, potential military strikes—if the talks failed.
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Mass
(27,315 posts)Now, I will read the article and come back to tell you what I think.
mylye2222
(2,992 posts)And his accomplishments at States.
Cela dit, comment allez vous?
Mass
(27,315 posts)and, I have the feeling it is a fairly good image of Kerry in general.
I just wished Remnick did not spend that much time talking about Kerry being rich. This seems fairly gratuitous in this article (though not inaccurate).
MBS
(9,688 posts)It really is irrelevant to the article, except, in a way (though Remnick doesn't mention this), as a measure of Kerry's character. Many people in his life would have been content just to enjoy The Good Life, or pursue public life mainly for power and fame. But that's not who Kerry is: he is absolutely determined to make the country and the world a better place. In some article recently, I saw Kerry described as "unrelenting" and "indefatigable" in his pursuit of peaceful resolutions to international crises. Which he is.
Yup, I agree with karynnj that he is the best SoS in my lifetime.
If I'd been the New Yorker editor, I would have asked Remnick to tone down the discussion of Kerry's (or, really, Teresa Heinz') wealth. Of course, Remnick IS the editor of the New Yorker himself, so maybe there was no one to give him honest feedback.
karynnj
(59,944 posts)Oddly, after reading your comment, I tried to think of how to describe it --- and settled on elitist NYC hippness. There were some of the old repeated notes that describe John (and Teresa) Kerry with none of the admiration routinely given to others in power.
Yet, very key credit is prominently and unambiguously given --- Kerry made the Iran deal happen -- and further, in describing the way it happened, they are clear that a year ago, others spent much time on "plan B", which included more sanctions - even though they were already onerous - or even war. (They do not include that there is considerable proof that Israel seriously considered war) What this means is that Kerry because of his persistence, character, relationships and skill very likely did what we all hoped he would as SoS - he make the world more peaceful.
The timing of the article means it was written before it became clear that there would be a climate change agreement -- which like Iran -- was something pushed by Kerry and used his relationships and willingness to create a solution that was different than anything used for previous agreements. Therefore, a significant accomplishment on climate change is just an item - with Syria, ISIS etc of things Kerry could accomplish in the future. It is telling that some articles are crediting just Obama and a few (strangely) Obama and Clinton. On twitter though, almost every one of the climate change orgs thanked Kerry .. and Obama.
This article in describing the meetings around Syria explain this to some degree. Kerry seems to be purposely and quietly working to move people to points where they can at least start to negotiate. This has to be like covering ice melting for the media, especially in our attention deficit age - whether the goal is climate change, ending the war in Syria, or preventing one in Iran. Even when there he achieves significant interim accomplishments, it may be that if Kerry made the story about his accomplishment in moving another country's position, it would make his job harder. Not to mention, the terrorist attacks on Paris were a far bigger story than the announcement the next morning in Vienna that a meeting that included both Iran and Saudi Arabia had developed a plan that had a goal of getting Syrian negotiations and a ceasefire by January.
On the Syrian chemical weapons, I suspect the problem is that though Kerry was instrumental in getting rid of 600 tons of chemical weapons, clearly an objectively good outcome, very few were "on his side" through this. The anti war, non interventionists were angry that he was a spokesperson for a small targeted attack; the neo cons wanted a BIG attack that was more about regime change than chemical weapons. The groups - for different reasons - credited just Putin and the neo cons argued it was a US loss.
At this point, ending the war in Syria could end up being as impossible as getting a two state solution in Israel. Yet, in both cases, he really did get further than anyone expected already. The sections on Israel are strange - GHWB failed, Bill Clinton failed, Condi Rice failed and George Mitchell failed to get a two state solution -- yet Kerry's attempt is treated differently and more negatively. Yet, I suspect the entire article supplies the answer. Like both Iran and climate change, all the wise voices argued that getting a solution was unlikely and when that proved true, they all said their "I told you so". If you try three near impossible things - and only two work, it's not bad! I liked Frank Lowenstein's comment that all of them are glad they tried.
After reading the entire thing, you see a good person, working extremely hard who - as the title says - likely prevented a war and is working diligently to bring a bloody civil war to an end. Add to that that since it was written, we know that he also deserves credit for the climate change agreement.
Given JUST the climate agreement, Iran, brokering the Afghanistan joint government, the Syrian chemical weapons deal -- he is the best secretary of state in my life time and one of the best ever.
YvonneCa
(10,117 posts)...account of JKs life since 2004. Thanks my lye2222.