Our secretary of state reassures us:

DOHA, Qatar — Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday the Obama administration is confident that the vast majority of weapons being supplied to Syrian rebels by U.S. allies are going to moderates and not finding their way to extremists.

“You can’t guarantee that one weapon or another may not fall in that kind of a situation into the hands that you don’t want it to,” he said. “But, in terms of fundamental balance of battlefield tactics and of effort, I think it is pretty clear that the prime minister shares a belief in trying to do what we need to do rapidly and to try to effect this through the SNC.”

In other news, the vast majority of guns purchased by the Department of Justice are not finding their way to Mexican drug cartels.

Was sequestration really the best time for the Obama administration to send new Secretary of State John Kerry overseas to announce $250 million in assistance to Egypt and $60 million in assistance to the Syrian rebels?

Because I’m sure we’ll hear about American firehouses shutting down because of the sequester… and in 2004, one of the biggest applause lines in Kerry’s acceptance speech at the Democratic convention in Boston was, “We shouldn’t be opening firehouses in Baghdad and shutting them in the United States of America.”

Because each time the administration points to some allegedly horrific cut, taxpayers can legitimately wonder, “why was that less of a priority than a Muslim Brotherhood-run Egypt or the Syrian rebels?”

I periodically joke that there is no off-season in the world of political campaigns. We are likely to see at least four, and perhaps more, special elections in the coming months:

Illinois 2nd Congressional District, where Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. resigned. A primary will be held February 26 (at this point, no Republicans are running, but eight Democrats have filed papers) and the special general election will be held April 9.

Missouri 8th Congressional District, where Rep. Jo Ann Emerson announced she would resign in February. The date for this special election has not been determined yet; the candidates for Republicans and Democrats will be selected by the party committees.

South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, where Rep. Tim Scott has been appointed the state’s next U.S. Senator. The special election will be held 18 weeks after Scott’s formal resignation from the House, likely setting the special election for May.

Massachusetts Senate: Presuming that President Obama selects John Kerry as his next Secretary of State, Gov. Deval Patrick would appoint  an interim senator to serve until a special election could be held, most likely in May or June. The interim senator would have the option of running in the special election to fill out the remainder of Kerry’s term, which ends in January 2015.

In Hawaii, the death of Sen. Daniel Inouye means that Gov. Neil Ambercrombie will select a replacement to serve until 2014, when a special election is held (the interim senator may and probably will run in the special election). If Ambercrombie selects Rep. Colleen Hanabusa– reportedly the dying wish of the senator – then Hawaii will hold a special election to fill her seat 60 days after she resigns her House office.)

Susan Rice’s decision to withdraw from consideration as secretary of state is the best news for Republicans since Election Day.

First, a quick reminder of why the Rice nomination mattered to Republicans: Opposition to Rice would have been garden-variety if not for Benghazi, which strikes many Republicans (and too few Americans as a whole) as a major scandal and a series of egregious, deadly misjudgments. Three major questions remain: why the requests for additional security were rejected in the weeks before the attack; precisely what actions were taken that night to rescue our staff in Benghazi; and why the explanations in the first days after the attack were erroneous.

The defense from Rice — I was only saying what I had been told by the intelligence community — doesn’t fly because the “error” aligned all too perfectly with the Obama campaign’s need at that moment: to dissuade the public from the notion that we had witnessed a major terror attack on September 11, and to assert that it was all the fault of some filmmaker who is now imprisoned by U.S. authorities on a probation violation.

Rice may have only been a minor player in the effort to insist that the events in Benghazi were not terrorism, but her role was sufficient to make any promotion to secretary of state an outrage. Her confirmation would be a brazen declaration that a U.S. official can lie to the public about life-and-death issues without consequence.

Now, indisputably, Benghazi has had a consequence for the administration. Not the consequence many on the right wanted, but at least the post-attack spin derailed the career ambitions of at least one participant.

An unexpected side effect of this decision is how much this turn of events is infuriating Obama’s allies. Both last night and today on Morning Joe, NBC News Andrea Mitchell reported, “A lot of Democrats are saying that the president did not show enough loyalty. A lot of women in the administration are very angry tonight, and I’m saying this at a very high level. Angry because they feel that she was not treated with respect, she was not given the support she needed and she was left to twist in the wind.”

Ruth Marcus, this morning (I’m quoting the print version; the online version is slightly different):

But, really, Mr. President, either nominate her or pick someone else — like, two weeks ago. Don’t leave her out there, fending for herself.

Thursday’s humiliating denouement fooled no one who has been around Washington for more than a minute and a half. If the president wanted Rice, her withdrawal never would have been accepted.

It never should have been allowed to come to this. On that score, Mr. President, I’ve got a problem with you.

Obama’s allies made two assumptions in recent weeks: First, that his victory in November would mean he would get what he wants in most ways in the coming years; second, that what they want is what he wants. Both of those assumptions were always destined to be disproven, but for liberals and fans of Rice, it’s like awakening to a bucket of cold water to see them disproven so soon.

There’s an argument that Republicans should be careful what they wish for, contending that Rice had a more hawkish outlook on foreign policy than John Kerry did. But the philosophical distance between the two figures is not that decisive, and in the end, the foreign policy will ultimately reflect the decision-making of President Obama — and he’ll make a lot of decisions Republicans will oppose and some they will support. (Of course, this discussion presumes there is still such a thing as a Republican foreign-policy consensus.)

NBC News is reporting that Susan Rice is no longer interested in the position of secretary of state and the president has accepted her decision.

This means that Massachusetts senator John Kerry is the most likely next top diplomat of the United States. Yes, folks, he’s back!

When the senator spoke at the Democratic convention earlier this year, I took a look at what Kerry would bring to the position:

The problem is that Kerry has gotten most of the biggest foreign-policy calls of the past two decades wrong.

He voted against the authorization of force for the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

He opposed President Bush’s 2007 surge in Iraq, calling it “a tragic mistake.” The surge, he elaborated, “won’t end the violence; it won’t provide security; . . . it won’t turn back the clock and avoid the civil war that is already underway; it won’t deter terrorists, who have a completely different agenda; it won’t rein in the militias.” In September 2007, Kerry voted in favor of a resolution introduced by Senator Carl Levin (D., Mich.) to withdraw all U.S. troops within 90 days.

Where Kerry isn’t wrong, he is living up to his flip-flopper label: He voted for the Iraq War and then later insisted he voted only to threaten the use of force, not to actually authorize the use of force. He initially supported and then opposed a funding bill for the Iraq War in late 2003, which prompted the confusing defense, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.”

He has called Israel’s security fence “a barrier to peace” and “a legitimate act of self-defense.”

In 2004, one of the biggest applause lines in Kerry’s acceptance speech at the Democratic convention in Boston was, “We shouldn’t be opening firehouses in Baghdad and shutting them in the United States of America.” By February of this year, Kerry was denouncing his own applause line: “Cutting foreign aid has always been a guaranteed applause line on the political stump . . .  efforts in Congress to cut billions from the president’s proposed budget for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) are short-sighted.”

In May 2011, shortly after the U.S. Navy SEALs successfully raided Osama bin Laden’s compound, Kerry was quick to emphasize that U.S. military efforts in that part of the world were far from over: “With the death of Bin Laden, some people will ask why we don’t pack up and leave Afghanistan. We can’t do that. . . . Our military is making significant inroads clearing the south of insurgents. But we expect a significant Taliban counterattack this spring to regain some of these areas. We also know insurgents are spreading into other areas of Afghanistan as we drive them from their bases in the south.” But one month later, Kerry was saying the cost of the war was “unsustainable” and urging President Obama to speed up troop withdrawals.

Eight years after his presidential bid, Kerry is still fond of a statement as opaque and messy as a spilled bowl of pea soup. Discussing the WikiLeaks documents and U.S. policy in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Kerry said, “Those policies are at a critical stage and these documents may very well underscore the stakes and make the calibrations needed to get the policy right more urgent.”

The policies are at a critical stage! (Quick, how was that moment different from any other of past years?) The documents may underscore the stakes! The urgency of the need to make the calibrations may get even more urgent!

But it is Kerry’s dedicated cultivation of Bashar Assad — one of his primary foreign-policy focuses since his 2004 presidential bid — that most clearly illustrates his naïveté.

On March 15, 2011, the first sparks of a national uprising against Assad’s regime ignited; within days there were large-scale protests in several cities, and police responded with live ammunition in some cases. About 70 Syrian civilians were killed in the initial weeks.

At the end of that month, Secretary Clinton uttered one of the administration’s most regrettable lines about the Syrian dictator in an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation: “Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer.”

The Wall Street Journal reported at the time:

A key supporter of Mr. Assad in Washington has been Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The former presidential candidate has held nearly a half-dozen meetings with Mr. Assad in recent years, according to his staff. The two men have sought to map out the terms of a renewed Syrian-Israel peace track.

Even this month, as protests starting gripping Syria, Mr. Kerry said he thought Syria’s president was an agent for change. . . .

As recently as February 2010, Kerry was telling Middle Eastern leaders that he believed Israel should return the Golan Heights to Syria.

Of course, as the uprising against the regime has continued, Syria has indeed moved and changed, in an exponentially more ruthless and dangerous direction. The ongoing conflict has killed about 24,000 Syrians, according to opposition forces, and displaced about 1.5 million refugees.

As Assad’s willingness to spill blood in large amounts in order to hold onto power has become indisputable, Kerry has given up on his Damascus host. At a hearing last month, Kerry declared, “The international community — with American leadership and support — must continue to help the opposition both in ending Assad’s reign of terror and in preparing for what comes next after he is gone.”

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts is mentioned as a possible contender to be the next secretary of state or the next secretary of defense.

If Kerry were to accept the appointment, Massachusetts state law requires the appointment of an interim senator by the governor, Deval Patrick, and a special U.S. Senate election must be held 145 to 160 days after a vacancy occurs. If Kerry were to depart his seat in January, that would put the special election in May or June.

Obviously, when you hear “special U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts,” the first name that comes to mind is incumbent Republican senator Scott Brown, who just lost his bid for reelection to Elizabeth Warren. There is a further wrinkle that the Journal mentions: Patrick is being mentioned as a possible appointee in Obama’s second term, and some in Massachusetts believe Brown is interested in running for governor someday. Brown insists he’s not focusing on either position until there is a certain vacancy.

If Deval Patrick were to depart Boston for a job in the Obama administration, his office would remain technically vacant for the remainder of his term (ending in January 2015) and Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray would be “Acting Governor” during that time.

Oh, John Kerry, don’t ever change. And by that I mean, please don’t become our next secretary of state.

Tonight, John Kerry will report for duty as his party’s designated attack dog on Mitt Romney’s foreign-policy views. Over on the home page, I note Kerry’s traditional flip-flopping, including a belated denunication of his 2004 convention line, “We shouldn’t be opening firehouses in Baghdad and shutting them in the United States of America.”

It takes me back to the Kerry Spot days . . .

But Kerry is a spectacularly wrongheaded choice as Romney’s chief foreign-policy critic, as the Massachusetts senator has spent a good chunk of his time since 2004 making repeated, passionate efforts to build a bridge to Syrian dictator Bashir Assad . . . the same Assad who is now ruthlessly crushing an uprising with thousands of civilian casualties. It’s hard to overstate how dedicated Kerry was to achieving a breakthrough with the dictator:

On March 15, 2011, the first sparks of a national uprising against Assad’s regime ignited; within days there were large-scale protests in several cities, and police responded with live ammunition in some cases. About 70 Syrian civilians were killed in the initial weeks.

At the end of that month, Secretary Clinton uttered one of the administration’s most regrettable lines about the Syrian dictator in an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation: “Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer.”

While Kerry’s staff denies that he ever referred to Assad as a “reformer,” there is little doubt that Clinton had Kerry in mind when she made that remark. The Wall Street Journal reported at the time:

A key supporter of Mr. Assad in Washington has been Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The former presidential candidate has held nearly a half-dozen meetings with Mr. Assad in recent years, according to his staff. The two men have sought to map out the terms of a renewed Syrian-Israel peace track.

Even this month, as protests starting gripping Syria, Mr. Kerry said he thought Syria’s president was an agent for change.

“President Assad has been very generous with me in terms of the discussions we have had,” Mr. Kerry said during a March speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “I think it’s incumbent on us to try to move that relationship forward in the same way.”

The Obama administration and some Western governments, however, have voiced increasing skepticism about Mr. Kerry’s outreach to Mr. Assad. Last month, the State Department and French government intervened to block a scheduled meeting between the two men in Damascus, said officials briefed on the matter. They were concerned the trip would signal Western weakness just weeks after the collapse of Lebanon’s government.

In the Carnegie speech, Kerry said, “My judgment is that Syria will move; Syria will change, as it embraces a legitimate relationship with the United States and the West and economic opportunity that comes with it and the participation that comes with it.”

As recently as February 2010, Kerry was telling Middle Eastern leaders that he believed Israel should return the Golan Heights to Syria.

Of course, as the uprising against the regime has continued, Syria has indeed moved and changed, in an exponentially more ruthless and dangerous direction. The ongoing conflict has killed about 24,000 Syrians, according to opposition forces, and displaced about 1.5 million refugees.

For what it’s worth, as the evidence and bodies piled up, Kerry came around to the well-established view that Assad is a thug that no U.S. administration should be trying to court. At a hearing last month, Kerry declared, “The international community — with American leadership and support — must continue to help the opposition both in ending Assad’s reign of terror and in preparing for what comes next after he is gone.”

Now he tells us.

Keep in mind, the stimulus was touted as a massive spending project that would keep the national unemployment rate below 8 percent.

Instead, we have had 39 straight months of unemployment above 8 percent, and the national debt is $4,890,570,120,943.74 ($4.89 trillion) more than it was on the day the stimulus passed.

Remember what Barack Obama said about adding just $4 trillion in debt, and over eight years instead of three and a half:

As you hear Democrats and members of the media insisting that an unemployment rate of 8.1 percent isn’t that bad — ignoring how much of the drop from the peak is driven by Americans ending their job searches and leaving the workforce — recall how they greeted economic times that look positively bountiful compared to our current state:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, December 21, 2002: “This is a crisis.” Unemployment rate at that time: 6.0 percent.

The New York Daily News, 11/2/2003:

The good news that economic growth leaped from June through September runs smack up against the miserable realities of a 6.1% U.S. unemployment rate and a state jobless rate of 8.8%. Until those figures drop, there is no cause for celebration in the streets. Count reviving the national economy as one mission that President Bush hasn’t accomplished.

Letter from Nancy Pelosi and Tom Daschle to President Bush, November 20, 2003:

American workers are weathering the effects of an economy where there is only one job for every three individuals searching for a job.

The Boston Globe, March 6, 2004:

In a statement issued from his Washington, D.C., campaign headquarters, Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, said the latest employment figures show that President Bush has “over-promised and under-delivered” on job growth.

The unemployment rate at that time: 5.6 percent.

November 2006:

Pelosi was not to be outdone, however, firing back at the president who she claimed had “the worst jobs record since the Great Depression,” in spite of Friday’s news that the October jobless rate fell to 4.4 percent, the lowest it has been in more than five years.

In the Washington Times, Charles Hurt writes:

Both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Romney look like they should be cast as president in a made-for-TV movie. But in reality, both are hopelessly out of touch, calculating wax figurines. They both even speak French! In the end, Mitt Romney is John Kerry without the war medals.

Oh, come on, that’s not true. For starters, Kerry doesn’t have his war decorations anymore, since he threw them away.

But I know John Kerry. John Kerry’s a blog target of mine. And Mitt Romney is no John Kerry.

David Harmer is a California lawyer who was the son of John Harmer, Ronald Reagan’s lieutenant governor. He had worked on the Hill for a while and then returned to private practice. Upon seeing Democrats controlling all of Washington, he decided to take on an entrenched Democrat in Congress, one who usually won comfortably. Harmer lost by 1.1 percent.

He wrote recently:

When I offered myself as a candidate for Congress last year, Mitt Romney easily could have taken a pass. There were plenty of excuses not to get involved: a contested primary, an uphill general-election battle, a union-supported incumbent, and all in a state that hadn’t voted Republican in a presidential election for 22 years. Instead, Governor Romney became one of my earliest and most influential supporters. He endorsed, he donated, and he urged his supporters to follow suit. His Free and Strong America PAC contributed the legal maximum. He sent an email blast on my behalf to all his donors in the western states. He promoted me on his website. He publicly recognized and encouraged me at his events. And he stuck with me not only through the election, but beyond.

Through his PAC, Mitt Romney has done a lot to elect conservatives, including plenty of Republicans a lot more conservative than he.

In 2010, Romney’s Free and Strong America PAC donated $5,000 each to the campaigns of Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, Pat Toomey, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Ron Johnson, and Jim DeMint. The PAC donated $5,125 to Marco Rubio.

On the House side, his PAC donated $5,000 to Sean Bielat in his bid to unseat Barney Frank in Massachusetts. Then $2,500 to Allen West of Florida, Sean Duffy of Wisconsin, Cory Gardner of Colorado, Tim Griffin of Arkansas, Doug Hoffman of New York, Daniel Webster’s bid to unseat Alan Grayson in Florida, Tim Scott in South Carolina, Bobby Schilling in Illinois, and dozens of other Tea Party favorites. The full list is here.

In the 2010 cycle, Romney’s PAC donated $639,304 to House Republican candidates and $159,995 to Senate Republican candidates. So far this cycle, it has donated $253,000 to House Republican candidates and $91,500 to Senate Republican candidates. In 2010, Romney’s PAC donated the maximum to 25 GOP candidates, and so far this cycle it donated the maximum to 120 candidates. The PAC donated the maximum to Michele Bachmann in the 2008 cycle and another $2,500 to her last cycle. He donated to Rick Perry’s reelection bid, too. In governor’s races, Romney-affiliated PACs donated “$62,000 to then-gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley in South Carolina and $30,000 to then-gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad in Iowa.” Was that an obvious effort to build up goodwill in early primary states? Sure. But I’m sure Haley and Branstad appreciated the cash infusion in their competitive races all the same. So was the $6,800 to Chris Christie’s bid.

Mock him for his money and family wealth, but Romney has used that fundraising network to help put a lot of conservative freshmen into the House and Senate and governors’ mansions.

(By the way, in Hurt’s metaphor, if Romney is a repeat of an obvious mistake, what was the obvious right move for the Democrats of 2004? Would they have been better off nominating Howard Dean? John Edwards? Dick Gephardt? The irony is that Kerry may very well have been the most competitive candidate the Democrats could have nominated in 2004.)

By the way, you know who else spoke French? John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Quincy Adams, James Madison, and James Monroe.

The death of Qaddafi, and some pop-culture silliness about television shows fearing to echo or managing to predict actual events, feature in the final Morning Jolt of the week. And then there’s this intriguing polling result:

Illinois? Really?

The headline is a predictable “Poll: Obama tops GOP Rivals in Illinois,” but look beyond that and the implications are pretty stunning:

Obama did best against Perry, with 50.8 percent of respondents reelecting the president and 32.8 percent choosing the Texas governor.

Obama did the worst again Romney, with 46.1 percent to 38.5. Against Cain, the former chief executive officer of Godfather’s Pizza, the percentage was 46.3 percent for Obama against 34 percent for Cain.

Finally against Ron Paul, Obama had a showing of 49.3 percent against 30.3 percent.

The poll is the fourth annual state survey taken by the institute. It surveyed by phone 1,000 registered Illinois voters from Oct. 11 through Oct. 16 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

“You could look at this as being uncomfortably close for the president in his home state,” institute director David Yepsen said. “On the other hand you could say Obama is holding up fairly well in Illinois, given the difficult year he has had politically and the continued poor performance of the economy.”

Get beyond the “meh” numbers for the Republicans. Note that other than his quasi-home state of Hawaii and perhaps some intensely Democratic state, like Vermont or Maryland, this should be one of Obama’s strongest states. He won it with 61.8 percent in 2008.

Also note, of course, this is registered voters, not likely voters, so if it holds to traditional patterns, it’s probably giving Democrats a slight edge they wouldn’t have among actual votes. (Insert joke about Illinois’s dead casting votes here.) Then we get to this: “The poll shows 51.8 percent of respondents think Obama is doing a good job, while 46.4 percent disapprove.”

In other words, even in the state most inclined to give Obama every benefit of the doubt, they’re souring on him.

“When an incumbent can’t get to 50% against challengers in the other party’s primary, that’s a big red flag in any state,” writes Ed Morrissey at Hot Air. “Undecideds usually break hard against the incumbent, and being below 50% means that the possibility of a loss becomes much greater, especially if turnout shifts in favor of the opponents. When that occurs in an incumbent President’s home state — especially one so solidly Democratic as Illinois — it’s practically a cue for a dirge. Pat Quinn’s 35% job approval rating as Governor isn’t exactly helpful either, as it will depress enthusiasm and grassroots efforts to turn out the vote. Obama may have to avoid Quinn in order to campaign effectively, and that won’t be easy to do. . . . Does this mean Republicans could end up winning Illinois in a general election? I wouldn’t bet money on that outcome, but that’s not the real issue here. What this means is that Obama will have to bet money on Illinois, and a lot of it, to keep the GOP from taking his home state in November 2012. That’s money that Obama won’t be spending elsewhere, like Virginia, Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina, and other states that he needs to keep in order to win re-election.”

To be honest, I’m not even sure Obama will need to spend much money to keep Illinois, and judging by the fundraising so far, Obama isn’t likely to lose in 2012 because of a lack of funds. What I do find significant about this is that if Obama’s numbers look mediocre here, they’re much worse in much less friendly territory, and thus, barring some dramatic change in the next 13 months, he’s doomed. Fairly early in the evening in 2004, appearing on NRANews.com and calling in to ABC News.com, I was confidently projecting a George W. Bush win, based on how John Kerry was dramatically underperforming Gore in non-swing states like Connecticut and New Jersey. If Kerry was under-performing Gore in heavily Democratic states, it was hard to believe he would somehow outperform Gore’s threshold in tougher places like Florida.

But . . . still a lot of race to run.

Yesterday’s talking point from David Axelrod, John Kerry, and others was that Friday’s Standard and Poor’s decision should be considered a “Tea Party Downgrade.”

From January 20, 2009 (the day Obama took office) to January 3, 2011 (the day the 112th Congress was sworn in), the total federal debt increased from $10,626,877,048,913.08 to $13,997,932,781,828.89. That is an increase of $3,371,055,732,915.81, or $3.3 trillion.

From January 3 to yesterday, the debt increased from $13,997,932,781,828.89 to $14,564,970,167,709.38.

That is an increase of $567,037,385,880.49, or $567 billion.

So in Axelrod’s world, somehow the $3.3 trillion debt increase under President Obama and Speaker Pelosi in the two years their party had complete control of the spending process is NOT responsible for the credit downgrade, but the $567 billion spent since January IS responsible.

From the RNC this morning:

 IT’S NOT JUST RANGEL

Senator John Kerry Is Avoiding Paying $500,000 In Taxes On His Yacht.

Obama’s First Nominee For HHS Secretary, Tom Daschle, Failed To Pay $128,000 In Taxes.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner Failed To Pay $34,000 In Taxes.

HHS Secretary Sebelius And Her Husband Had To Pay $7,000 In Back Taxes.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis’ Husband Had A Tax Lien On His Business For 16 Years.

Nancy Killefer, Slated To Be The White House Chief Performance Officer, Had A $900 Lien On Her House For Failing To Pay Unemployment Taxes For Household Help.

Lael Brainard, Obama’s Nominee For Undersecretary Of The Treasury For International Affairs, Was Late In Paying Property Taxes.

I just realized that yesterday was the six-year anniversary of the Kerry Spot, the first blog I did for NRO.

One of my posts from that very first day was on the rumor that Richard Holbrooke was the front-runner to be Secretary of State in a Kerry administration. I quoted an article from Michael Kelly’s Things Worth Fighting For:

Holbrooke as Secretary would mean that The New York Times would run every day a story detailing how, in the words of an unnamed senior administration official, everyone in the administration except Secretary Holbrooke was an utter buffoon.

Ha-ha! Boy, here we are, six years later, and we can laugh about that scenario coming to pass . . .

Richard Holbrooke. Obama’s point man for Afghanistan and Pakistan got off to a high-profile start, only to find his public role diminished over time. A heated confrontation with Hamid Karzai left Holbrooke unable to deal with the Afghan president, and John Kerry had to take over negotiations following Afghanistan’s fraud-ridden election. A huge New Yorker profile didn’t help, giving purchase to complaints among some Obama loyalists — who recall Holbrooke’s devout support for Hillary Clinton in 2008 — that the diplomat is too egocentric.

The Kerry Spot, ahead of the curve by five years and change.