Just after President Barak Obama announced that he would
nominate Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts to be the U.S. Secretary of State,
the E.U. Secretary of State (Minister of Foreign Affairs), Catherine Ashton,
welcomed the prospect of working with Kerry. Whether she knew it at the time or not, she would be working with an American politician. After all, Kerry had already run for the American presidency. To be sure, he was not taking up the foreign affairs post to build his resume. I believe he genuinely wanted the job. The problem is, is trying to please all the people all the time, a politician's patina (or deeper?), best in foreign affairs? In this essay, I focus not on this question, but, rather, on the patina itself in the case of John Kerry so the underlying problem behind the question of fit with foreign affairs can be more transparent to the wider public.
