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Kerry becomes all-around adviser to Obama
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-10-22 12:59
WASHINGTON: He's not president, a Cabinet member or ambassador, but Sen. John Kerry has ascended to the unofficial role of President Barack Obama's global adviser on key issues that could reshape the nation's image around the world. Mediating Afghanistan's presidential election vaulted Kerry from the already prominent chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee into the most exclusive circle around a new president who is juggling but has not resolved a variety of domestic and foreign policy matters. Beyond policy, Kerry knows how Washington works.
"Obviously, Sen. Kerry is somebody who has a broad range of experience and an in-depth knowledge of issues, ranging form energy and climate change to health care to foreign policy," said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. "I think it's that experience and insight that (Obama) certainly greatly values." That cannot be overstated. Obama made his debut on the national stage at the 2004 presidential convention at which Democrats nominated Kerry to challenge George W. Bush's bid for a second term. Obama's speech electrified the party and the convention. It was the first time many Americans had heard of the young Illinois state senator. "I'm here because of you," Obama wrote Kerry on the January day he was sworn in as the nation's first black president. The note is framed and hangs on Kerry's Senate office wall. And now, Obama is leaning on Kerry to help shape his foreign policy. The two men met at the White House on Wednesday just hours after Kerry returned from Afghanistan, where he played a crucial role in persuading President Hamid Karzai to accept a runoff vote after a fraud-plagued presidential election. "I really tried to be the utility, you know, hitter or fielder at the time," the 65-year-old senator, his voice hoarse and hip sore after an overnight flight home, said Wednesday in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press in his Senate office. The meetings with Karzai, he said, were intensely emotional and played out over "a lot of days, a lot of evenings, a lot of meals, a lot of tea." Karzai, Kerry said, felt deeply that he had won the election and that he was being insulted for trying to have a democratic process. Kerry could relate. "Do I understand the day after an election where you think you've won, or you have votes that weren't counted or something? Been there, done that," Kerry said. He talked to Karzai about his own loss to George W. Bush in 2004 and about the 2000 election, in which the Supreme Court called the contested election for Bush. "It helped him see that ... every country's gone through its difficult races," Kerry said. Kerry's plane touched down at home around 6:30 am Wednesday. By lunchtime, he was advising Obama at the White House. Kerry says he advised the president to know the outcome of the Afghan elections before sending more troops there. "I mean, who's your defense minister?" Kerry said. "Do you have a good defense minister who's going to help coordinate the Afghan forces with your troops or do you have a political appointee who doesn't know anything about what he's doing? These things matter." |
