Kerry finds spot in Obama circle

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By Laurie Kellman ASSOCIATED PRESS

He's not a Cabinet member or an ambassador, but Sen. John Kerry has ascended to the unofficial role of President Obama's global adviser on key issues that could reshape the nation's image around the world.

Mediating Afghanistan's presidential election vaulted Mr. Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, from the already prominent chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee into the most exclusive circle around a new president who is juggling but has yet to resolve a variety of domestic and foreign policy matters. Beyond policy, Mr. Kerry knows how Washington works.

Mr. Kerry and Mr. Obama also share a political pedigree. Both were mentored by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, who died in August.

"Obviously, Sen. Kerry is somebody who has a broad range of experience and an in-depth knowledge of issues, ranging form energy and climate change to health care to foreign policy," said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. "I think it's that experience and insight that [Mr. Obama] certainly greatly values."

That last bit cannot be overstated. Mr. Obama made his debut on the national stage at the 2004 presidential convention at which Democrats nominated Mr. Kerry to challenge George W. Bush's bid for a second term. Mr. Obama's speech electrified the party and the convention. It was the first time many Americans had heard of the young Illinois state senator.

"I'm here because of you," Mr. Obama wrote Mr. Kerry on Jan. 20, when he was sworn in as the nation's first black president. The note is framed and hangs on Mr. Kerry's Senate office wall.

And now, Mr. Obama is leaning on Mr. Kerry to help shape his foreign policy. The two men met at the White House on Wednesday just hours after Mr. Kerry returned from Afghanistan, where he played a crucial role in persuading President Hamid Karzai to accept a runoff vote after a fraud-plagued election.

Mr. Kerry said he told Mr. Obama it wouldn't make "common sense" to decide whether more U.S. troops should go to Afghanistan without knowing the election results.

Mr. Kerry brushed off a question about how it felt to be the de facto secretary of state.

"That's an unfair characterization. I don't think it's appropriate, de facto whatever whatever," he said. Mr. Kerry called his participation in the talks an act of luck, in that he was in the region at the time on a fact-finding mission.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, said Mr. Kerry, "embraced" and encouraged his role in what became intensely personal and emotional talks with Mr. Karzai.

Mr. Kerry said he was in touch with Mrs. Clinton constantly while he was there.

"I thought it was important that I not take steps in some freelancing way," Mr. Kerry said. "She encouraged me to stay at it and to stay engaged in it, and I think we worked as an effective team."

Still, observers said, Mr. Kerry's role as a presidential adviser on so many major domestic and foreign policy issues is unusual. Earlier this year, for example, Mr. Kerry helped reopen a U.S. dialogue with Syria in a meeting in Damascus for President Bashar Assad.

David Gergen, director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard, said that traditionally the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee "stays at home and goes quietly on fact-finding missions.

"It's extremely rare that any president calls on an individual outside the executive branch to do as much representative work and diplomacy as Sen. Kerry," said Mr. Gergen, who served as an adviser to four presidents.

If Mrs. Clinton leaves her position during the Obama administration, Mr. Gergen added, Mr. Kerry "would be on everyone's short list and probably right at the top of it as a potential successor."