by Glen Johnson
The Saudis have long been free to visit the United States, for example, but until 2018, US citizens could not get a tourist visa to visit Saudi Arabia.519 They could go only for educational, religious, or business reasons, which in many cases meant advising the Saudis about ways to improve their government, economy, or educational systems.
Small countries such as Switzerland strictly enforce their own border, as do mammoth ones like China. Diplomats, including the president of the United States, need a visa and must have their passport checked before entering almost any country in the world.
It only makes sense for the United States to use similar controls, if only for equity’s sake. But I believe there’s a special reason in the aftermath of 9/11 and the lingering threat of other terrorist attacks.
People should be coming into our country only in a controlled, verifiable manner. And how another country treats our citizens when they try to visit abroad should be given greater weight when we decide how to treat citizens from that country who want to visit the United States.
I also believe the United States should recognize several assets making our country so attractive to visitors, and better leverage them to its benefit.
The US banking system, real estate market, and assembly of colleges and universities are coveted by people around the world. Access to them should be considered in a foreign policy context.
Why should US companies be forced to enter into technology-sharing agreements with Chinese counterparts in order to sell goods or services to Chinese citizens? The United States vets foreign deals for national security reasons but doesn’t have the same requirement.
The same is true with real estate. Americans must live in China for at least a year before they’re allowed to buy a single residence, which they then must occupy themselves. A Chinese citizen, by contrast, can buy as many US residential or commercial properties as they want on the drive in from the airport, as one real estate expert put it.520
Properties across New York are being gobbled up by Russian oligarchs and Middle Eastern sheikhs, and the tallest condominium building in Boston has dozens of absentee owners from China.
There’s either no reciprocity for US citizens in the home countries of such buyers, or a US citizen faces disincentives like red tape, eavesdropping, or government minders where they’re allowed to move in.
Likewise, many wealthy and influential foreigners send their children to boarding school, college, or graduate school in the United States. The daughters of two of our country’s most vexing foreign policy opponents both went to college in the United States. Those enrollments highlight the draw of the US higher education system for even the most oppositionist foreigners.
To my mind, access to US banks, real estate, and colleges should be a tool for advancing our country’s interests—even if they’re reserved as the ultimate fallback devices. They can be assets to prevent things like intellectual property theft or the murder and dismemberment of a government critic.
Google the word diplomacy and one of the resulting definitions is “the art of dealing with people in a sensitive and effective way.” Most often, our country’s benevolence, altruism, and ideals have caused it to act sensitively—and rightly so.
But in a world and century where the United States faces increasing challenges to its stature and national interests, it must also consider additional tools allowing it to act effectively.
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MY BIGGEST TAKEAWAY FROM this experience? We who are fortunate to live in the United States and much of the Western world are incredibly lucky.
It’s not an overstatement to say that many, many others on Earth are in a daily struggle just to survive. I remember seeing a man lying on the side of the road during one of our drives through Africa. He was barely alive. What was it that was going to compel him to stand up and carry on? Or how sad was it going to be if that dusty patch was where he took his final breath, all alone?
When I hear people lament clothing or technology they lack, or food not cooked the way they like, I shake my head mentally.
I didn’t know how lucky I was to have my health, a home, and an intact family until I traveled the world and saw so many who lacked it all.
I urge you to see for yourself. Until then, know you should count your blessings.
In late August 2016, Secretary Kerry made good on a promise to himself. He got back on his bike and set off to conquer his nemesis: the Col de la Colombière.
As I looked around the parking lot in Scionzier, I realized many of the people gathered had been there the prior May—including the paramedics who’d rendered first aid after he fractured his femur.
The secretary’s riding partners were different, though.
One was a friend, businessman Tim Collins. The other was a fellow government official, United Arab Emirates national security adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed. He was an avid cyclist, and he enthusiastically embraced the challenge of conquering a onetime Tour de France stage.
The trek was grueling, prompting Collins to drop out about halfway up. But Secretary Kerry pedaled on. Near the peak, I hopped out of my car and ran backward to get a perfect picture of him against the surrounding mountains.
John Kerry nears the summit of a onetime section in the Tour de France bike race.
When he crossed a pavement marker indicating they’d reached the summit at 1,613 meters (5,291 feet), the secretary embraced bin Zayed.
The relaxation was short-lived, however. The two took off, speeding down the backside of the mountain. All I could think about was someone blowing a tire or sliding off the gravel shoulder. One grueling rehab had been enough for the Boss.
Luckily, they made it down safely and then had lunch overlooking Lake Annecy.
“I wanted to go back,” the secretary later told The Boston Globe. “I said, ‘I’ve got to go pick up where I left off.’”521
As I’d seen firsthand for four years, John Kerry played just like he worked.
EPILOGUE
US SENATOR PAUL TSONGAS walked into the Massachusetts Statehouse on January 13, 1984, with a surprising announcement: He wasn’t going to seek a second term the coming fall because he’d been diagnosed with cancer.
The decision was a shock to voters but an unexpected opportunity for a group of politicians eager to succeed him. The scramble for a coveted Senate seat alongside Edward M. Kennedy, the famed Democrat also representing Massachusetts, was eventually won by John Kerry, the state’s lieutenant governor.
When Tsongas was finally ready to leave office, he had another surprise. He resigned January 2, 1985, the day before the incoming congressional class was to be sworn in, so Lieutenant Governor Kerry could take office twenty-four hours before his fellow freshmen.
That minor boost in seniority launched John Kerry on a congressional career that would continue through four reelection campaigns. During a span of nearly thirty years, he’d emerge not only as the Democrats’ 2004 presidential nominee, but, toward the end of his time in elective office, as an unofficial foreign affairs emissary for Barack Obama, his former Senate colleague and the newly elected president of the United States.
Kerry also rose to the role of chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the same panel the Navy veteran addressed in 1971 as a Vietnam War opponent.
The blend of experience on the national and international stages, plus a measure of gratitude for Kerry selecting him to deliver the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, prompted President Obama to nominate him to be the country’s sixty-eighth secretary of State.
“In a sense, John’s entire life has prepared him for this role,” the president said on December 21, 2012. Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, were standing next to him and Vice President Joe Biden at the White House.
“I think it’s fair to say that few individuals know as many presidents and prime ministers, or grasp our foreign policies as firmly as John Kerry,” the president added. “And this makes him a perfect choi
ce to guide American diplomacy in the years ahead.”522
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ON JUNE 12, 1985, six months after John Kerry began his Senate career, I strode across an outdoor stage at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, ready to receive my bachelor of arts degree. In a last attempt for a laugh, I’d used athletic tape to spell out the words “Hi Mom” on my mortarboard.
While the school prided itself on its liberal arts tradition, not teaching for jobs but how to “learn to learn,” I’d majored in government and focused on English with the specific purpose of preparing myself for a career in journalism.
The aspiration had come circuitously. As a middle schooler growing up north of Boston, I won a free-throw-shooting contest during a practice for my youth basketball team. My coach, Rick Harrison, was a sportswriter for The Sun of Lowell, Massachusetts, and he promised to take the two top finishers to a Boston Bruins game he had to report about the following week.
When that night arrived, I sat in the rollicking Boston Garden, practically hanging out over the ice in a press box bolted to the face of a balcony. Afterward, I waited outside the steamy Bruins locker room as my coach was inside, interviewing Bobby Orr and other players about the night’s game.
The experience was transformative. Imagine, I thought: a job where you get a literal front-row seat to history and the chance to meet with and speak to famous people, before telling everyone else all about it.
From that day on, my career was charted.
Over the years Kerry worked his way up the ranks of seniority in the US Senate, I did the same on the ladder of journalism.
First it was the City News Bureau of Chicago, which spawned famed city columnist Mike Royko and novelist Kurt Vonnegut. Then The Salem Evening News in Salem, Massachusetts, which has a broom-riding witch in its logo evoking its historical past. Then the Lowell Sun itself, where I became one of Rick Harrison’s coworkers. Finally, the major leagues: the Associated Press and The Boston Globe—twice each—working for both in Boston and Washington.
On January 15, 2013, I was a fifty-year-old reporter sitting at my desk in the Globe’s main newsroom when my cellphone rang. On the other end was Kerry, asking if we could have a private conversation. The senator promised the exchange would be lost to posterity if I didn’t like what he said. Intrigued, I stepped into a nearby conference room and closed the door as the senator began to speak.
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ALMOST FIFTEEN YEARS EARLIER, on April 28, 1998, I’d arrived at the Museum of Flight in Seattle for a reception kicking off a two-day aviation safety conference put on by the Boeing Company. I was the AP’s national transportation writer at the time.
Entitled “Airplanes 101,” the conference was aimed at aviation correspondents and devised to teach us about the safety enhancements engineered into Boeing airplanes. It was a none-too-subtle effort to influence our writing, should one of the company’s planes ever crash.
One of the most convincing demonstrations was a film showing a plane undergoing its static wing test. In the test, a crane lifts a cable attached to a wingtip, arcing it higher and higher until the moment—precisely calculated in advance by Boeing engineers—when the wing breaks in half amid a concussion of sound and a spray of metal parts.
“If you look out the window and can still see the wingtip bouncing between the top and bottom of the pane, you don’t have anything to worry about,” an engineer said.523
It was his rule of thumb for anyone who worried a Boeing plane could be knocked out of the sky by turbulence.
After the course ended, I returned to Boeing Field with some company staffers. Just down the runway from the Museum of Flight, we looked at the shop used to paint 737s after they’d been flown over from their assembly plant a few miles away in Renton, Washington.
Lining the tarmac were a couple of dozen planes flying the flags of a United Nations’ worth of airlines, with logos in a palette of colors and names of airlines from Europe, Africa, and Asia emblazoned across their fuselage.
Also on the tarmac sat two more conspicuous planes, a pair of Boeing 757s—also built in Renton—that had been painted in a blue-and-white livery.
Across the middle of their fuselages, just above the windows, read the words United States of America. On each tail was an American flag.
I asked about the planes and was told they were just about to be delivered to the US Air Force for worldwide travels by senior government officials.
When I asked about the amenities in the customized commercial airliners, a Boeing representative laughed and said only, “I think the passengers will be quite comfortable on them.”
_________
AS SENATOR KERRY BEGAN to speak while I pressed into my cellphone, he said up front, “Listen, I know this is sensitive for you as a reporter, because it is for me as a politician. So if you don’t like what you’re about to hear, we can both forget we ever talked and keep the relationship we’ve always had.”
We’d met in 1993, when I was covering City Hall for the Lowell Sun, which happened to be Senator Paul Tsongas’s hometown newspaper. The Sun is a gritty paper, deeply invested in its hometown, unafraid to hold elected officials accountable. Though rooted in a heavily Democratic city, it had a strongly conservative editorial page, perilous to politicians of all stripes.
It also was not shy about covering the big stories.
That’s why a local paper had a sportswriter like Rick Harrison covering the big-city Bruins. It’s also why it sent its own reporter across the country to trail Tsongas when he decided, after his cancer treatment, to return to politics by running for president in 1992. I was tapped for that assignment, my first presidential campaign.
John Kerry came to The Sun’s Kearney Square offices a year later for an editorial board meeting—the kind of affair where editors get to grill an elected official about whatever they wanted, and the official hopes to earn credit for being willing to face anything thrown at him.
As I looked across the table, Kerry leafed through a packet of Sun news clippings given to him by his staff, so he’d know what had been written about him by some of the people now waiting to probe him.
When the senator began speaking, I began writing in my notebook.
We went on to cross paths numerous times during the next decade, as I covered the Massachusetts statehouse for the AP. It was from my desk in Room 456, a pressroom pasted with the bumper stickers of campaigns long past, that I chronicled Kerry’s epic 1996 reelection campaign against the Republican governor of Massachusetts, William F. Weld.
We were later rejoined in Washington. I was assigned to cover the Massachusetts congressional delegation for The Globe immediately after covering the 2000 presidential campaign in which Republican George W. Bush beat Kerry’s Senate freshman colleague, Democrat Al Gore.
Six months after President Bush was sworn in, Kerry took a trip to Seattle for a hearing of the Senate Small Business Committee, which he chaired, and an intriguing meeting with Democratic donors.
The fact the senator was holding court with political financiers, and then planned to travel immediately from the West Coast to Iowa for an annual picnic hosted by Democratic governor Tom Vilsack, prompted speculation Kerry himself was planning to run for president in 2004.
“You cover the congressional delegation; he’s your guy. You go,” Globe Washington bureau chief David Shribman said in assigning me to tag along.524
From 2001 through 2004, I covered the arc of Kerry’s campaign, from the team building and fundraising that established it; to the convention where Obama spoke that codified Kerry’s nomination; to the night in Copley Square in Boston when his running mate, John Edwards, announced the pair wouldn’t immediately concede the election because of lingering questions about the vote total in Ohio.
After Kerry bowed out, I’d see him occasionally over the next eight years, when he held events back in Massachusetts or I returned to Washington and swung by his office to trade political gossip.
Our co
ntact grew more frequent, though, as President Obama sought to follow up his historic 2008 victory with another win in the 2012 campaign.
Hillary Rodham Clinton had already announced she wouldn’t continue as secretary of State in a second Obama term. Kerry had been a close runner-up for the job four years earlier, and another possibility for succeeding Clinton—United Nations ambassador Susan Rice—had been accused of misleading the public in September 2012 after the Benghazi attack.
If President Obama was to win in November and Clinton was stepping down but Rice was unable to replace her, there was a good chance the president could tap Kerry to be the new secretary of State. And if Kerry was to resign as senator, it could touch off a crazy race to replace him.
That head-spinning Hot Stove League of speculation had put Kerry and me in frequent touch as President Obama campaigned against Republican John McCain, went on to win the 2012 election, and then made the decision to nominate him as the nation’s chief diplomat.
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ON THE PHONE WITH me that mid-January morning in 2013, Kerry outlined his proposal.
Inauguration Day was nearing and it looked as if his nomination as secretary of State was not only progressing through the Senate but that his colleagues would soon confirm him.
Kerry and his staff were looking to add fresh faces to the team heading to the State Department, and Chief of Staff David Wade had spoken very highly of me as the group discussed filling a communications role.
So, Senator Kerry wanted to know, would I be interested in “leaving the dark side and coming over to the light?”525 It was a clever reversal of the way reporters thought of politicians and their respective professions, but it meant would I consider surrendering the neutrality of reporting in favor of working for a partisan administration, in this case a Democratic one.
The idea would be to travel with the secretary of State, be in the room when big decisions were made, help explain them to the press corps, keep the Boss in touch with the folks back in Boston, and handle special projects as they cropped up over the next four years.