tool name

Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2009

Kerry seeks to shine heading Senate foreign relations panel

WASHINGTON — For most senators, assuming the chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee would be the pinnacle of a public service career. For John Kerry, it is a bit of a gold-plated consolation prize.

After being defeated by President Bush in the 2004 White House race, Kerry has struggled to find his footing back in the Senate. A junior member of his panel — one Barack Obama — has gone on to win the presidency. As his secretary of state, Obama chose not Kerry, but Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Now Kerry's first hearing as chairman on Tuesday will be to consider the nomination of Clinton, the woman he did not endorse for president, to the premier Cabinet position in the administration of the man he did back. It cannot be the outcome he had in mind.

Yet colleagues say Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat newly elected to a fifth term, is a perfect fit for the chairmanship of a committee that set his own political career in motion in 1971 when he appeared before it as an anti-war veteran to speak about Vietnam. They do not expect lingering tension between Kerry and Clinton as she assumes her Cabinet slot.

"It would be foolish to think that either one of them has lost out," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. and a longtime member of the panel. "I think he has landed in a good place."

Kerry said that he was looking only forward, that too much was made of personal political wrangling.

"This is a great job," Kerry, who turned 65 last month, said in an interview. "This is an opportunity to affect policies I have cared about for a long time. I am sitting in a terrific seat. I am independent, call my shots. There are a lot of virtues, believe me."