Article on Sec. Kerry in National Journal
good photo, too (sorry, couldn't seem to post it here-- go to url below)
http://www.nationaljournal.com/white-house/john-kerry-a-diplomatic-one-man-band-20131011
Call him the un-Hillary. Unlike his predecessor, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Kerry has always relished direct mediation in the world's trouble spots—and the more troubled, the better, aides say. Whereas Clinton, perhaps with an eye to the 2016 presidential race, appeared reluctant to personally take charge of especially hard issues ranging from Mideast peace to a Syrian truce, Kerry has jumped in eagerly. "Every single time a tough problem has fallen into John Kerry's lap, he's gone into it believing that it could be solved, and he of all people could solve it," says a senior administration official. Kerry, the failed 2004 Democratic nominee for president and the son of a career diplomat, is also said to be determined to leave behind his mark as a great secretary of State now that he no longer has political ambitions. . . Is Kerry, only nine months on the job, already proving to be a better secretary of State than Hillary Clinton? To be fair to Clinton, she delegated Afghanistan and Pakistan to Holbrooke, one of America's most able diplomats, and the Middle East to George Mitchell, the former U.S. senator. She also became secretary of State at a rawer time for America, when the key task of the new Obama administration was to restore some luster to a U.S. image badly tarnished by the ongoing Iraq war and the global financial crisis triggered by Wall Street. As a result, the administration was then focused on emphasizing the "soft" diplomacy of U.S. image-building, values-promotion and influence over "hard" or coercive diplomacy, in other words personal mediation in conflicts.
But neither did Clinton seem eager to step in when Holbrooke and Mitchell or other special envoys failed to make headway. It's also clear that Kerry's efforts are largely of his own making—especially in the Mideast, where the White House appears to have somewhat reluctantly let him try, marginalizing previous efforts to "pivot" its interests to Asia. And to a striking degree, Kerry's efforts to bring Israelis and Palestinian together, to negotiate a truce in Syria at a "Geneva II" conference, and to find common ground with Iran on its nuclear program are all pieces of the same puzzle. Iran, for example, will continue to shore up Syria's Assad and Hezbollah as long as it fears military threats from Israel and the United States over its nuclear program. If those threats abate, and some kind of nuclear agreement is signed, it might just be possible for Kerry to also induce Tehran to separate itself from the Assad regime, thereby making a truce in the civil war easier. A similar logic applies to Russia, which has also backed Assad and often seen itself as an adversary to U.S. interests in the region. . .
. . .What's not very clear as yet is how much Kerry is making administration strategy, versus simply carrying it out energetically, as Clinton often did. To a striking degree, new National Security Advisor Susan Rice has taken charge inside the White House, officials say, and Obama himself remains his own No. 1 strategist. But if there are deals to be made and Kerry's the one in the camera shot, he'll get a lot of the credit. And he may yet leave his mark as America's top diplomat.
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Last edited Sat Oct 12, 2013, 06:58 AM - Edit history (1)
Yes, indeed! 
. . as in "not in a million years".
Whatever Susan Rice's skills may be in foreign POLICY (I grant that she is knowledgeable and smart), her skills at DIPLOMACY seem to me close to zero. I shudder to think how all these delicate negotiations on a string of volatile and unexpected issues (Syria, Russia, subbing for the president in Asia) would have gone had Rice been SoS instead. White House NSA advisor seems to be a much better place for her than any position that has anything to do with public interpersonal relations.
And SoS does seem to be THE exactly right position for JK. Sec. Kerry is proving himself (in spades!) to be a superb diplomat in the highest and best sense, bringing to his job not only depth of understanding of policy, but also a supple and nuanced understanding of the often delicate cultural and personal context specific to each conflict, skills at mediation and negotiation, and firmness combined with graciousness.
Plus he and Lavrov seem to have a genuinely good working relationship.
Keep up the great work,Sec. Kerry. 
FYI, I didn't think that this article was all that complimentary to Clinton. The comparisons mostly seemed to me to highlight Kerry's skills and achievements. But, maybe I didn't read it carefully enough: after this 10 days-and-counting of the Shutdown, I was grateful to read anything that was even remotely positive , so that's what I focused on.