State of Play: John Kerry’s High-Stakes Year

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

State of Play: John Kerry’s High-Stakes Year
October 2, 2014 8:00 am by Suzy Hansen



“I don’t think about a legacy. I think about getting the job done as well as I can, and history and other people will take care of the rest of it,” says Kerry, photographed at the State Department in Washington, D.C.
Photographed by Ralph Mecke, Vogue, October 2014


Through one international crisis after another, America’s Secretary of State is waging a marathon campaign of high-stakes diplomacy.

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During this jolting period Kerry will seem to be everywhere at once, engaging in negotiations, jousting with his foreign counterparts, and struggling to pull off small victories before jumping back on his plane. “I don’t think there has ever been a Secretary of State who has thrown himself into the job with as much verve and conviction as this guy has,” says Strobe Talbott, a deputy Secretary of State under President Clinton and now the president of the Washington think tank the Brookings Institution as well as a Kerry adviser. “If he can’t get a workable and acceptable compromise on a dispute, it’s very hard to imagine anybody who can.”

Kerry practices just the sort of vigorous diplomacy President Obama spoke about at West Point—but his relentlessness, especially on issues as seemingly intractable as Israeli-Palestinian peace, has been bruising at times. Does America wield the influence in the world that it once did? Critics say that Kerry’s go-for-broke diplomatic style raises just this question—and that he has wasted time on problems that the U.S. cannot solve; supporters say that if Kerry achieves a breakthrough in even one of his major endeavors—say, a nuclear deal with Iran—he could be one of the most important Secretaries of State in recent history.

“There’s a lot going on,” Kerry acknowledges when I meet with him over the summer in his office at the State Department. “But when you have four or five flare-ups at the same time, you’ve still got to talk to people; you’ve got to sit down with them face-to-face, look in their eyes, grab the problem, and work through it. So we’re managing. We can multitask.”

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But he does reflect on the past. “You know, obviously, losing the presidency is not the option of first choice,” he says and laughs, as if awed by the memory. “But you can’t get lost in it. I said, ‘I am not going to make this the defining moment of a life of involvement in public service and caring about things.’ I was a senator and had a lot I was interested in; I have a great family, a great life, and I have nothing to complain about. So I went right back in and started kicking. . . .

“I love it, I really enjoy this job, it’s a great job,” he continues. “And I am excited. Look, we got the deal on chemical weapons {in Syria}; we’ve got Iran talking. We’ve got the Middle East people talking—we’ve made a lot of progress there, and I believe we’ll get back to talking.” He cocks his head pointedly, with a faint smile. “I am not finished.”