Alone No More

Freshly minted Secretary of State John Kerry has always been something of a loner. In his long Senate career he was known more for his investigations and his courtship of foreign leaders than for collaborating on legislation. Even his favorite sports–biking and windsurfing–are solitary. So how does someone who’s spent his life picking his own waves learn to row a boat that someone else is steering?

The answer, thus far, is very carefully. He took just seven Senate aides over to State with him. He allowed the White House to pick his spokesman and his speechwriter, and his first speech was an unspectacular 5,500 words on the importance of foreign aid. Denis McDonough, the new White House chief of staff who until last month was deputy National Security Adviser, was trotted out to do the Sunday shows before the new Secretary of State. The New York Times in early March reported that Vice President Joe Biden would be taking a lead role in foreign policy, citing as an example a Biden call to Syrian opposition leaders persuading them to meet with Kerry in Rome.

Certainly the White House will be watching Kerry closely in the initial months, lest he overreach. Over the past four years, he has criticized President Obama from his perch as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urging the Administration to get involved in Libya well before it did, criticizing its handling of the Middle East peace process and backing arms for the Syrian opposition when Obama would not. Since his nomination, Kerry has met with every living past Secretary of State and has held regular meetings with U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, who is widely believed to have been Obama’s first choice for his job. Rice is still close to Obama, and Kerry asked his staff to let nothing interfere with or postpone those one-on-one meetings.

But Kerry wants not just to represent Obama’s policies; he wants to help craft them as well. To that end, he plans more time in Washington than his million-miler predecessor Hillary Clinton. Kerry has been telling friends he likes to think of himself as Bill Walton, the legendary basketball player. In 1985, Walton joined the Boston Celtics, Kerry’s hometown team, and played alongside future Hall of Famers Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish. Walton, an old pro in his own right, didn’t go in and try to compete with the Big Three; instead he looked for ways to be useful to them–setting up passes for Bird and Parrish, coming off the bench to give McHale a breather. “There’s no more me,” Kerry told staff at his first meeting at the State Department, “only we.”