The indication that President Barack Obama has decided to nominate Massachusetts Senator John Kerry as the next Secretary of State adds dignity and statesmanship to that office, particularly in light of the exceptional leadership of the present Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.
Kerry has had a distinguished career as a United States Senator for 28 years, and is the tenth most senior member of the present Senate, and was, of course, the 2004 Democratic Presidential nominee, losing a close race to George W. Bush, because of the electoral result in Ohio.
Kerry has been Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the past four years, and had he won the Presidency in 2004, he would have been responsible for our foreign policy for the past eight years, assuming he had won a second term.
He becomes the eighth Presidential nominee to lose the White House and become Secretary of State, following Henry Clay (under John Quincy Adams); Daniel Webster (under John Tyler); John C. Calhoun (under John Tyler); Lewis Cass (under James Buchanan); James G. Blaine (under Benjamin Harrison); William Jennings Bryan (under Woodrow Wilson); and Charles Evans Hughes (under Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge).
These Secretaries of State stood out as major figures in their times, and in our history long term, and John Kerry will be seen the same way when he retires from the State Department after serving Barack Obama.