Long, positive article about Kerry as Secretary of State

http://www.vogue.com/1414623/john-kerry-secretary-of-state/

The article is written by a reporter who traveled with him on the trip to France last summer and it covers both his accomplishments and him as a person.

It is hard to pick 4 comments, but here goes:

On the job:
That long game has brought a kind of vindication. Today President Obama’s foreign policy happens to look much like Kerry proposed America’s should during the campaign in 2004: more modest, more interested in multilateral diplomacy and fighting terrorism on a case-by-case basis. Kerry praises what he calls President Obama’s “very careful, hard-nosed approach” to decision-making. “I am impressed by the questions he asks . . . and how he wants to know the strategy and the facts that support that choice before he makes it—not afterward.”
<snip>

“He listens well,” says Ryan Crocker, former ambassador to Iraq, of Kerry’s diplomatic style. “He will listen to his interlocutors, understand their viewpoint, and make his points within the context of where they stand. That kind of empathy goes a long way to creating a climate in which compromise and agreement become possible. And he also has a reputation for absolute honesty and integrity. He never misleads, and he’s known for it.”

As this is DU JK, it seems right to add these two more personal pieces:

Peals of laughter can be heard from his plane cabin when Kerry FaceTimes with his daughter Vanessa, a critical-care physician in Boston, and his two-and-a-half-year-old grandson, Alexander. Kerry’s other daughter, Alexandra, a film director, recently had a baby girl. “He’s been awesome, actually,” Vanessa says of Kerry as grandfather. “I have left him alone to babysit Alexander, which makes me feel really guilty. I remember asking him, ‘What are you going to do if the prime minister of Israel calls?’ And he said, ‘I’ll figure it out.’ ”

“We have many late-night and early-morning phone calls, and John takes every opportunity to get home,” reports his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, whom he married in 1995 and who quickly became known for her outspokenness and humor on the campaign trail. Now 75, she suffered a seizure last summer while vacationing on Nantucket, and has been keeping out of the public eye through her recovery. “I have learned so much about the brain and the time it takes to recover from a seizure such as mine,” she adds. “I feel blessed to have the support of my husband—who quite literally lay beside me in my hospital bed last year.”