John Kerry helped bring the world into the Paris climate agreement and expanded America’s reputation as a climate leader. That reputation is now in tatters, and President-elect Joe Biden is asking Kerry to rebuild it again – this time as climate envoy, a position Biden plans to include in the National Security Council. It won’t be easy, but Kerry’s decades of experience and the international relationships he developed as a senator and secretary of state may give him a chance of making real progress.

While U.S. media heap praise on Secretary of State John Kerry for his efforts at restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, more critical still are recent developments across the region. Four factors, specifically, have proven decisive in enticing the two sides to the negotiating table. The real question now is whether an agreement can be reached before the window of opportunity closes again. Surprisingly, a new round of negotiations began Monday in Washington D.C. after a three-year hiatus. 

 Iran’s nuclear program, on the other hand, is alive and well. Vice President Joe Biden practically bragged of the economy-crippling effects of the latest round of sanctions during last year’s vice presidential debate, even as his Secretary of Defense acknowledged that despite U.S. efforts, Tehran remained intent on advancing its nuclear program. Indeed, the IAEA’s latest report shows that if anything, Iran is likely expanding its enrichment capacity. Iran’s civilians, however, find themselves in the midst of one of the worst medical supply shortages in the nation’s long history.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s actual birthday was celebrated on January 15 and will be observed on the national holiday on Monday, January 21, which is also Inauguration Day. As more than a million people are expected to attend inaugural celebrations in D.C. and millions more will watch around the world, neither the President nor leading Democrats have publicly mentioned his most faithful constituents, whose votes for him surpassed 95 percent in both elections.

Politics made for strange bedfellows in those taking swipes at President Obama’s white guy appointees. Staunch GOP conservative Mike Huckabee took the first hard whack. He screamed that Obama was a hypocrite on diversity in that he used the issue of the war on women during the presidential campaign to pound the GOP and then turned around and stacked his cabinet with white males. The swing then went over the political spectrum to Harlem Democratic congressman Charles Rangel who called the president’s diversity record, “embarrassing.”

As Senator McCain himself repeated relentlessly, American lives were lost at Benghazi and given the obvious lapses in security measures, that is simply unacceptable.  Instead of insisting the focus remain on an examination of those security measures in an effort to ensure that any mistakes made were never repeated, McCain nearly singlehandedly created a political sideshow of questionable value that only distracted attention away from the real and important issues.  If this distraction in any way detracts from identifying and correcting the mistakes made, then another tragedy could possibly occur, one, like that which occurred at Benghazi, could have been prevented if the right people had been paying attention to the right issues.

President Barack Obama is expected to nominate a new Secretary of State soon, as Hillary Clinton intends to step down after the Presidential Inauguration in January. Clinton was a prolific traveler during her four years as Secretary of State, visiting Latin America and the Caribbean fourteen times, but never in a particularly transformative manner. The extent to which her successor emphasizes Western Hemispheric affairs could have far-reaching consequences for interregional cooperation and competition. Senator John Kerry and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice are the two most likely candidates for the position. 

We've heard a million complaints that the president needs to get "tougher," that his style is too laid-back for him to fight aggressively enough with opponents. He clearly prefers substantive dialogue to fighting, which can be admirable in a leader, but the kiss of death to a candidate. Previously I have defended his style, but not anymore. In the debate the president came across as someone in a heavyweight fight who was being sucker-punched repeatedly but refused to respond in kind.