Photograph by Scott Eells/Bloomberg

Senator John Kerry, a Democrat from Massachusetts, during day three of the Democratic National Convention.

John Kerry came to the back of the 2004 campaign plane, where some reporters were milling in the aisle.

We were having a mundane conversation about the way we connect our traveling laptop computers with the home office.

The lanky senator from Massachusetts, a candidate for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, asked us somewhat awkwardly what we were talking about. Our answer about our technology seemed equally trivial.

“I don’t even use a BlackBerry,” Kerry explained of his own lack of knowledge about such matters. “When I want to tell someone what to do, I just call them on the phone.”

It sounded, at the time, like an insight into the way a powerful and privileged man does business. He went on, after all, to secure his party’s nomination for president in Boston: “John Kerry, reporting for duty.”

It’s safe to assume that Kerry skipped the Berry and went straight to the iPhone.

It also appears that the career senator, now his home state’s senior statesman, stands to achieve a role that he so ambitiously sought eight years ago: Representing the United States of America around the world.

Should President Barack Obama nominate Kerry, by all private accounts the leading contender for Secretary of State now that UN Ambassador Susan Rice has withdrawn her name, the Senate once again will be sending one of its own to the front lines of American diplomacy. Hillary Clinton, a former senator from New York and first lady, is ready to retire the post.

Kerry, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War who returned home to protest American involvement there, has a long and storied political career. The Swift Boat that he commanded in the rivers of Southeast Asia became the emblematic name for an assault his political adversaries effectively waged against him in the 2004 campaign. George W. Bush, the wartime president, won re-election.

Should Kerry emerge from the roiled political waters of Rice’s confrontation with Republican senators as Obama’s nominee for the nation’s top diplomat, he will immediately face some healing at home. It’s not lost on anyone that the architect of Rice’s defeat is another senator, John McCain of Arizona, who also sought the presidency — twice. Losing to Obama in 2008, McCain has prevailed in his first contest with a re-elected president in 2012.

Like that “listening tour” that Clinton made during her campaign for Senate, the senior senator from Massachusetts will have to spend as much time hearing out the opposition on Capitol Hill — with Republicans, chiefly McCain, questioning Obama’s resolve in foreign theaters such as Syria — as he will in engaging other world leaders.

Less time calling people and telling them what to do.

Original post is Kerry’s Moment: A Listening Tour by Political Capital.

What’s in a title?

For Jill Kelley, the Tampa socialite who embraced the world of the top brass at U.S. Central Command, it’s not only a license plate.

It’s also “inviolability.”

Kelley, whose e-mails complaining of harassment led to an FBI investigation that led to exposure of an extramarital affair that retired Army Gen. David Petraeus was having with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, which led to Petraeus’ resignation as CIA director and also to a Pentagon inspector general’s inquiry into prolific e-mails between Kelley and Marine Gen. John Allen, has called on 911 to clear her bay-shore sidewalks of the media seeking comment. (See the Bloomberg.com profile by Michael C. Bender and Phil Mattingly on Kelley.)

“You know, I don’t know if by any chance, because I’m an honorary consul general, so I have inviolability, so they should not be able to cross my property,” Kelley told a 911 dispatcher in Tampa. “I don’t know if you want to get diplomatic protection involved as well.”

Foreign Policy reports that the 37-year-old Kelley is an “honorary consul” to South Korea – a title described as symbolic, with no official responsibilities, yet stamped on the specialty license plate of her Mercedes S500.

“She does not work as a real consul,” Foreign Policy quotes a diplomatic official as saying. “They play a role to improve the relationship between the ROK and the U.S. Jill Kelley helped to get support for [the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement] and she arranged meetings between the ROK Ambassador to Washington and local businessmen when the ROK Ambassador visited the Tampa area.”

Foreign Policy notes: “In fact,`honorary’ diplomats have no specific privileges or protections under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and therefore her property is not actually ”inviolable” as a matter of international law.”

ABC News also reports this this afternoon:   Kelley has lost the privilege of visiting MacDill Air Force Base, home of CentCom and the U.S. Special Operations Command, without an escort. ABC News reports hat Kelley participated in a base program known as “Friends of MacDill,” its members granted cards allowing them to clear security when entering the base.

Both Petraeus, who led the Tampa-based CentCom before running the war in Afghanistan, and Allen, who served as deputy there before running the war in Afghanistan and continues in command there have served with actual titles: Four-star general.

Original post is Jill Kelley on `Inviolability’ by Political Capital.

Filed from Kabul by Bloomberg’s Nicole Gaouette:

Afghanistan will be granted major non-NATO ally status, a designation that allows for expedited loans and exports, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said today in Kabul.

The designation, which goes into effect immediately, is the first such classification the Obama administration has made. Other countries accorded MNNA status by the U.S. include Israel, Egypt, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

Clinton, speaking in the gardens of the presidential palace in Kabul, emphasized the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan’s future and stability. “We’re not even imagining abandoningAfghanistan,” she said.

Clinton was in the Afghan capital for a visit lasting a little more than two hours before heading to Tokyo for a conference on Afghanistan that starts tomorrow. The gathering, which will focus on Afghanistan’s economic transition, will include financial pledges by nations attending.

While State Department officials traveling with Clinton have refused to comment on how much the U.S. will offer, they say it will be in line with previous levels of giving. When asked about the amount countries are expected to pledge to Afghanistan at the Tokyo conference, Clinton declined to answer.

Afghanistan needs an estimated $3.9 billion a year, according to a World Bank estimate.

Clinton said the MNNA designation will allow Afghanistan access to U.S. military supplies and allow it to take part in training exercises with the U.S. military.

She told Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the security transition is on track. “You will always have our support” in efforts to stabilize the country, Clinton said.

The secretary of state also reiterated the U.S. commitment to continuing reconciliation talks with the Taliban movement that is fighting Karzai’s government. “We see a positive shift,” she said.

See Clinton’s press conference with Karzai here.

Original post is Clinton: Afghanistan’s New Status – `Not Even Imagining Abandoning’ by Political Capital.