The only things keeping the nomination of John Kerry as the next Secretary Of State from being unanimous were the votes of the toweringly embarrassing senatorial delegation from the state of Texas, and the dumber half of the senatorial delegation from Oklahoma, which, incidentally, makes the delegation from Texas look like the Congress of Vienna. That he failed to convince John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, and James Inhofe of his qualifications as the country's top diplomat is no disgrace. In fact, it's the strongest argument in favor of Kerry's getting the hell out of Dodge after 28 years in the Senate. Even negotiating with armed lunatics around the world has got to be easier than trying to treat with the many odd critters cavorting through the Inhofe cabeza.

It is a capital mistake to look at Kerry's ascent to his new job as some kind of redemption play. He lost the presidency in 2004 because his campaign was not quite good enough to overcome the natural inertial force of an incumbent, even the worst one who ever stood for re-election, some organized national gay-baiting, and, let's be honest, some wholesale (and still largely unplumbed) chicanery in the state of Ohio. He did not run a bad campaign, just the wrong one, at the time. He has nothing to come back from, except on the idiotic scoreboard that the Beltway wiseguys and the courtier press keep in their minds.

And, of course, it is a job to which he was born. He's the son of a diplomat. He remembers riding his bicycle through the bombed-out streets of Berlin in the aftermath of World War II. And in the Senate, he's always had one foot overseas. We have an embassy in Vietnam right now because John Kerry (and, to be fair, John McCain) got the United States to look at Vietnam as a country, and not simply as a war. (If people had done that same thing in, say, 1965, neither Kerry nor McCain might be in the Senate right now, and millions of other people would still be alive.) But, if you ask me about Kerry's qualifications as Secretary Of State, I will answer in an acroynym -- BCCI.

For all the talk about how stiff and cold he is, there is in Kerry a very nimble mind and a remarkable ability to think outside the box. It took a nimble mind to become the spokesman for veterans who came home to protest against the war in which they had fought, and in which their brothers were still fighting. "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" is a question from the deepest part of the imagination because it connects so solidly with the deepest part of the imagination of the people to whom it is asked. Who will be that last man? Your brother? Your cousin? The kid you played football with in high school? When he went after BCCI, he did so against the advice of almost everyone else in Washington. who didn't want their secrets revealed or the bodies dug up. For his entire career, Kerry's political imagination has encompassed the possibilty that his own government may have been complicit in crimes, and that has made people very nervous.
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Read more: Secretary Kerry - Esquire http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Confirmation_Of_John_Kerry#ixzz2JTJS3MFF