Almost President: John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry was a former soldier and Massachusetts Senator who lost the 2004 election by an electoral vote count of 286 to 251, a margin of 35 votes, in an election that showed the importance of winning "swing states."
John Kerry was born on December 11, 1943, the son of Richard Kerry, a Foreign Service Officer and an attorney for the Bureau of United Nations Affairs, and Rosemary Isabel Forbes Kerry, a World War II nurse and member of the wealthy Forbes family. He was born in Aurora, Colorado, at Fitzsimons Army Hospital. His father was a member of the Army Air Corps at the time. Kerry was raised as a Roman Catholic and as a child served as an altar boy. (We have something in common!) Kerry attend schools in Europe and spent his summers at the Forbes family estate in Brittany.
Kerry is 6 ft 4 in tall, and is active in a lot of sports, including surfing, windsurfing, and ice hockey (known as hockey in Canada). He is a bass guitar player. Kerry married Julia Thorne in 1970, and they had two daughters together: Alexandra and Vanessa. Alexandra was born on September 5, 1973, days before Kerry began law school. Thorne and Kerry were divorced on July 25, 1988, and the marriage was formally annulled in 1997. Thorne later married Richard Charlesworth, an architect, and moved to Bozeman, Montana, where she became active in local environmental groups such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Thorne supported Kerry's 2004 presidential run. She died of cancer on April 27, 2006.
Kerry's second and current wife is Teresa Simões-Ferreira Heinz, the widow of Pennsylvania Senator H. John Heinz III (a Republican, and former United Nations interpreter). The two were introduced to each other by John Heinz at an Earth Day rally in 1990, but did not meet again until after John Heinz's death, at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. They were married on May 26, 1995, in Nantucket. Teresa has three sons from her previous marriage. Teresa's net worth is estimated at $750 million. Kerry's financial disclosure form for 2011 put his personal assets in the range of $230,000,000 to $320,000,000, including the assets of his spouse and any dependent children.
In 1962, Kerry was a volunteer for Ted Kennedy's first Senatorial campaign. That same year he entered Yale University, majoring in political science. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1966. Kerry played on the soccer, hockey, lacrosse and fencing teams and also took flying lessons. He also became a member of the secretive Skull and Bones Society. In March 1965 he won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that was critical of U.S. foreign policy in Vietnam. In the speech he said, "It is the spectre of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism and thus, it is self-defeating." He was chosen to give the class oration at graduation. His speech was a broad criticism of American foreign policy, including the Vietnam War.
On February 18, 1966, Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserve. He began his active duty military service on August 19, 1966. After completing 16 weeks of Officer Candidate School at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island, Kerry received his officer's commission on December 16, 1966. His first tour of duty was as an ensign on the guided missile frigate USS Gridley in 1968. The ship spent most of a four month deployment on rescue station in the Gulf of Tonkin, standing by to pick up downed aviators. During his tour on the Gridley, Kerry requested duty in Vietnam, listing as his first preference a position as the commander of a Fast Patrol Craft (PCF), also known as a "Swift boat." On June 16, 1968, Kerry was promoted to the rank of lieutenant, junior grade. On June 20, 1968, he left the Gridley for Swift boat training at the Naval Amphibious Base in Coronado.
On November 17, 1968, Kerry reported for duty at Coastal Squadron 1 in Cam Ranh Bay in South Vietnam. In his role as an officer in charge of Swift boats, Kerry led five-man crews on a number of patrols into enemy-controlled areas. His first command was Swift boat PCF-44, from December 6, 1968 to January 21, 1969, when the crew was disbanded. During the night of December 2, 1968 and early morning of December 3, 1968, Kerry was in charge of a small boat operating near a peninsula north of Cam Ranh Bay together with a Swift boat (PCF-60). According to Kerry and the two crewmen who accompanied him that night, they surprised a group of men unloading sampans at a river crossing, who began running and failed to obey an order to stop. As the men fled, Kerry and his crew opened fire on the sampans and destroyed them, then rapidly left. During this encounter, Kerry received a shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow. It was for this injury that Kerry received his first Purple Heart.
Kerry received his second Purple Heart for a wound received in action on the Bo De River on February 20, 1969. Kerry's boat was hit and a piece of shrapnel hit Kerry's left leg, wounding him. Kerry still has shrapnel in his left thigh because the doctors tending to him decided to remove the damaged tissue and close the wound with sutures rather than make a wide opening to remove the shrapnel.
Eight days later, on February 28, 1969, Kerry was in tactical command of his Swift boat and two others in an eight boat formation. Running into an ambush, Kerry directed the boats to turn to the beach and charge the Viet Cong positions. Kerry's boat was the target of an RPG round as the boat beached at the site. An enemy soldier with a rocket launcher jumped and ran from a spider hole. While the boat's gunner opened fire, wounding the enemy soldier on the leg, and while the other boats approached and offered cover fire, Kerry jumped from the boat and chased the enemy soldier and killed him, capturing a loaded rocket launcher. Kerry was awarded the Silver Star for this incident.
On March 13, 1969, five Swift boats were returning to base together from their missions after a firefight earlier in the day, during which Kerry received a slight shrapnel wound. As they returned, a mine was detonated directly beneath the lead boat. Kerry's arm was injured when he was thrown against a bulkhead during the explosion. Kerry rescued a survivor from the water and received the Bronze Star for his actions during this incident. He also received his third Purple Heart.
When the presidential campaign of 2004 developed, approximately 200 Vietnam veterans formed a group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT, later renamed Swift Vets and POWs for Truth) to oppose Kerry's campaign. The group held press conferences, ran ads and endorsed a book questioning Kerry's service record and his military awards. The group included several members of Kerry's unit. The campaign originated the widely-used political pejorative 'swiftboating', to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. The majority of Kerry's former crew mates have stated that SBVT's allegations are false.
After receiving his third wound, Kerry was entitled to re-assignment away from combat duties. On March 26, 1969, Kerry was transferred to await his orders and left Vietnam in early April. In January 1970, he requested early discharge in order to run for Congress the following fall. He was discharged from active duty on March 1, 1970. After returning to the United States, Kerry joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), a group of about 20,000 at the time. On April 22, 1971, Kerry became the first Vietnam veteran to testify before Congress about the war. Wearing green fatigues and service ribbons, he spoke for nearly two hours with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The day after this testimony, Kerry participated in a demonstration with thousands of other veterans in which he and 1000 other veterans threw their medals and ribbons over a fence erected at the front steps of the United States Capitol building to demonstrate their opposition to the war. He also appeared as a guest on The Dick Cavett Show on ABC television on June 30, 1971, participating in a debate about war atrocities.
On May 30, 1971, local and state police awoke and arrested 441 demonstrators, including Kerry, for trespassing. All were given the Miranda Warning and were hauled away on school buses to spend the night at the Lexington Public Works Garage. Kerry and the other protesters later paid a $5 fine, and were released.
In 1972 Kerry ran for a seat in the House of Representatives, losing to the only Republican to be elected to Congress that November in a district carried by Democratic Presidential nominee George McGovern. In September 1973, he entered Boston College Law School. He received his Juris Doctor (J.D.) from Boston College in 1976. After passing the bar exam and being admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1976, he went to work in that office as a full-time prosecutor. In January 1977, he was promoted to First Assistant District Attorney.
In 1979, Kerry resigned from the District Attorney's office to set up a private law firm. He re-entered electoral politics by running for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts and won a narrow victory in the 1982 Democratic primary. The ticket, with Michael Dukakis as the gubernatorial candidate, won the general election.
The junior U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, Paul Tsongas, announced in 1984 that he would be stepping down for health reasons. Kerry decided to run for the seat. He was elected to the Senate despite a nationwide landslide for the re-election of Republican president Ronald Reagan, for whom Massachusetts voted by a narrow margin. Early in his senate career he chaired the Kerry Committee report which investigated the Iran Contra drug links, a precursor to the Iran-Contra affair.
On November 15, 1988, at a businessmen's breakfast in East Lynn, Massachusetts, Kerry made a joke about then-President-elect George H.W. Bush and his running mate, saying "if Bush is shot, the Secret Service has orders to shoot Dan Quayle." He apologized the following day.
In 1996, Kerry faced a difficult re-election fight against Governor William Weld, a popular Republican incumbent. He won re-election with 53 percent to Weld's 45 percent. In the 2000 presidential election, Kerry found himself close to being chosen as the vice presidential running mate.
During the first term of President George W. Bush, Kerry supported Bush both on the war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. Kerry said on October 9, 2002 "I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." Kerry also gave a January 23, 2003 speech to Georgetown University saying "Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator; leading an oppressive regime he presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real." Kerry had spoken before the war about the sorts of weapons many believed Saddam Hussein had. On the Senate floor on October 9, 2002, he said that "According to the CIA's report, all U.S. intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons. There is little question that Saddam Hussein wants to develop nuclear weapons." But after the invasion of Iraq, when no weapons of mass destruction were found, Kerry strongly criticized Bush, contending that Bush had misled the country.
Kerry announced his candidacy for President in 2004, but initially was not considered a favorite. In the 2004 Democratic Presidential primaries, Kerry surprised many by defeating several Democratic rivals, including Sen. John Edwards (D-North Carolina.), former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and retired Army General Wesley Clark. His victory in the Iowa caucuses is considered by pundits to be the tipping point where Kerry revived his sagging campaign. Kerry went on to win landslide victories in a number of primaries on route to victory. On July 6, 2004, he announced his selection of John Edwards as his running mate. Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who was Kerry's 2004 campaign adviser, wrote an article in Time magazine claiming that after the election, Kerry had said that he wished he'd never picked Edwards, and that the two have since stopped speaking to each other. In a subsequent appearance on ABC's This Week, Kerry refused to respond to Shrum's allegation, calling it a "ridiculous waste of time."
During his bid to be elected president in 2004, Kerry frequently criticized President George W. Bush for the Iraq War. While Kerry had initially voted in support of authorizing President Bush to use force in dealing with Saddam Hussein, he voted against an $87 billion supplemental appropriations bill to pay for the subsequent war. His statement on March 16, 2004, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it,” helped the Bush campaign to label Kerry as a "flip-flopper" and has been cited as contributing to Kerry’s defeat. Even a superior debate performance did not seem to help Kerry's campaign.
On November 3, 2004, Kerry conceded the race. Kerry won 59.03 million votes, or 48.3 percent of the popular vote; Bush won 62.04 million votes, or 50.7 percent of the popular vote. Kerry carried states with a total of 251 electoral votes to Bush's 286.
Following the election, Kerry established a separate political action committee, Keeping America's Promise, which declared as its mandate "A Democratic Congress will restore accountability to Washington and help change a disastrous course in Iraq". Through Keeping America's Promise in 2005, Kerry raised over $5.5 million for other Democrats up and down the ballot. Through his campaign account and his political action committee, the Kerry campaign operation generated more than $10 million for various party committees and 179 candidates for the US House, Senate, state and local offices in 42 states focusing on the midterm elections during the 2006 election cycle.
On October 30, 2006, Kerry was a headline speaker at a campaign rally being held for Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. Speaking to an audience composed mainly of college students, Kerry said, "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." The day after the remarks were made public, leaders from both sides of the political spectrum criticized Kerry's remarks, which he said were a botched joke. Republicans including President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain and then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, said that Kerry's comments were insulting to American military forces fighting in Iraq. Democratic Representative Harold Ford, Jr. called on Kerry to apologize. Kerry initially stated: "Let me make it crystal clear, as crystal clear as I know how. I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy." Kerry said that he had intended the remark as a jab at President Bush, and described the remarks as a "botched joke", and that he had inadvertently left out the key word "us" (which would have been, "If you don't, you get us stuck in Iraq"). After two days of media coverage, citing a desire not to be a diversion, Kerry apologized to those who took offense at what he called the misinterpretation of his comment.
On January 10, 2008, Kerry endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama for President. He was considered as a possible Vice Presidential candidate for Senator Obama, and after Senator Joe Biden was eventually chosen for the second spot on the ticket, speculation arose that John Kerry would be a candidate for Secretary of State in the Obama administration. That would not happen until Obama's second term.
On December 15, 2012, several news outlets reported that President Barack Obama would nominate Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, after Susan Rice, who was believed to be Obama's preferred choice, withdrew her name from consideration following criticism of her response to the 2012 Benghazi attack. On December 21 Obama nominated Kerry for the position, which received positive commentary. His confirmation hearing took place on January 24, 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The committee unanimously voted to approve him on January 29, 2013, and the same day the full Senate confirmed him on a vote of 94-3. In a letter to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Kerry announced his resignation from the Senate effective February 1. Kerry was sworn in as Secretary of State on February 1, 2013.
Kerry was U.S. secretary of state throughout the second term of the Obama administration from 2013 to 2017. During his tenure, he initiated the 2013-2014 Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and negotiated agreements restricting the nuclear program of Iran, including the 2013 Joint Plan of Action and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In 2015, Kerry signed the Paris Agreement on climate change on behalf of the United States.
At the end of the Obama administration in January 2017, Kerry remained active in public affairs from 2017 to 2021 as a vocal opponent of Obama's successor, President Donald Trump. Kerry returned to government in January 2021, becoming the first person to hold the new position of U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, under Joe Biden.
John Kerry was born on December 11, 1943, the son of Richard Kerry, a Foreign Service Officer and an attorney for the Bureau of United Nations Affairs, and Rosemary Isabel Forbes Kerry, a World War II nurse and member of the wealthy Forbes family. He was born in Aurora, Colorado, at Fitzsimons Army Hospital. His father was a member of the Army Air Corps at the time. Kerry was raised as a Roman Catholic and as a child served as an altar boy. (We have something in common!) Kerry attend schools in Europe and spent his summers at the Forbes family estate in Brittany.
Kerry is 6 ft 4 in tall, and is active in a lot of sports, including surfing, windsurfing, and ice hockey (known as hockey in Canada). He is a bass guitar player. Kerry married Julia Thorne in 1970, and they had two daughters together: Alexandra and Vanessa. Alexandra was born on September 5, 1973, days before Kerry began law school. Thorne and Kerry were divorced on July 25, 1988, and the marriage was formally annulled in 1997. Thorne later married Richard Charlesworth, an architect, and moved to Bozeman, Montana, where she became active in local environmental groups such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Thorne supported Kerry's 2004 presidential run. She died of cancer on April 27, 2006.
Kerry's second and current wife is Teresa Simões-Ferreira Heinz, the widow of Pennsylvania Senator H. John Heinz III (a Republican, and former United Nations interpreter). The two were introduced to each other by John Heinz at an Earth Day rally in 1990, but did not meet again until after John Heinz's death, at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. They were married on May 26, 1995, in Nantucket. Teresa has three sons from her previous marriage. Teresa's net worth is estimated at $750 million. Kerry's financial disclosure form for 2011 put his personal assets in the range of $230,000,000 to $320,000,000, including the assets of his spouse and any dependent children.
In 1962, Kerry was a volunteer for Ted Kennedy's first Senatorial campaign. That same year he entered Yale University, majoring in political science. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1966. Kerry played on the soccer, hockey, lacrosse and fencing teams and also took flying lessons. He also became a member of the secretive Skull and Bones Society. In March 1965 he won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that was critical of U.S. foreign policy in Vietnam. In the speech he said, "It is the spectre of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism and thus, it is self-defeating." He was chosen to give the class oration at graduation. His speech was a broad criticism of American foreign policy, including the Vietnam War.
On February 18, 1966, Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserve. He began his active duty military service on August 19, 1966. After completing 16 weeks of Officer Candidate School at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island, Kerry received his officer's commission on December 16, 1966. His first tour of duty was as an ensign on the guided missile frigate USS Gridley in 1968. The ship spent most of a four month deployment on rescue station in the Gulf of Tonkin, standing by to pick up downed aviators. During his tour on the Gridley, Kerry requested duty in Vietnam, listing as his first preference a position as the commander of a Fast Patrol Craft (PCF), also known as a "Swift boat." On June 16, 1968, Kerry was promoted to the rank of lieutenant, junior grade. On June 20, 1968, he left the Gridley for Swift boat training at the Naval Amphibious Base in Coronado.
On November 17, 1968, Kerry reported for duty at Coastal Squadron 1 in Cam Ranh Bay in South Vietnam. In his role as an officer in charge of Swift boats, Kerry led five-man crews on a number of patrols into enemy-controlled areas. His first command was Swift boat PCF-44, from December 6, 1968 to January 21, 1969, when the crew was disbanded. During the night of December 2, 1968 and early morning of December 3, 1968, Kerry was in charge of a small boat operating near a peninsula north of Cam Ranh Bay together with a Swift boat (PCF-60). According to Kerry and the two crewmen who accompanied him that night, they surprised a group of men unloading sampans at a river crossing, who began running and failed to obey an order to stop. As the men fled, Kerry and his crew opened fire on the sampans and destroyed them, then rapidly left. During this encounter, Kerry received a shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow. It was for this injury that Kerry received his first Purple Heart.
Kerry received his second Purple Heart for a wound received in action on the Bo De River on February 20, 1969. Kerry's boat was hit and a piece of shrapnel hit Kerry's left leg, wounding him. Kerry still has shrapnel in his left thigh because the doctors tending to him decided to remove the damaged tissue and close the wound with sutures rather than make a wide opening to remove the shrapnel.
Eight days later, on February 28, 1969, Kerry was in tactical command of his Swift boat and two others in an eight boat formation. Running into an ambush, Kerry directed the boats to turn to the beach and charge the Viet Cong positions. Kerry's boat was the target of an RPG round as the boat beached at the site. An enemy soldier with a rocket launcher jumped and ran from a spider hole. While the boat's gunner opened fire, wounding the enemy soldier on the leg, and while the other boats approached and offered cover fire, Kerry jumped from the boat and chased the enemy soldier and killed him, capturing a loaded rocket launcher. Kerry was awarded the Silver Star for this incident.
On March 13, 1969, five Swift boats were returning to base together from their missions after a firefight earlier in the day, during which Kerry received a slight shrapnel wound. As they returned, a mine was detonated directly beneath the lead boat. Kerry's arm was injured when he was thrown against a bulkhead during the explosion. Kerry rescued a survivor from the water and received the Bronze Star for his actions during this incident. He also received his third Purple Heart.
When the presidential campaign of 2004 developed, approximately 200 Vietnam veterans formed a group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT, later renamed Swift Vets and POWs for Truth) to oppose Kerry's campaign. The group held press conferences, ran ads and endorsed a book questioning Kerry's service record and his military awards. The group included several members of Kerry's unit. The campaign originated the widely-used political pejorative 'swiftboating', to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. The majority of Kerry's former crew mates have stated that SBVT's allegations are false.
After receiving his third wound, Kerry was entitled to re-assignment away from combat duties. On March 26, 1969, Kerry was transferred to await his orders and left Vietnam in early April. In January 1970, he requested early discharge in order to run for Congress the following fall. He was discharged from active duty on March 1, 1970. After returning to the United States, Kerry joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), a group of about 20,000 at the time. On April 22, 1971, Kerry became the first Vietnam veteran to testify before Congress about the war. Wearing green fatigues and service ribbons, he spoke for nearly two hours with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The day after this testimony, Kerry participated in a demonstration with thousands of other veterans in which he and 1000 other veterans threw their medals and ribbons over a fence erected at the front steps of the United States Capitol building to demonstrate their opposition to the war. He also appeared as a guest on The Dick Cavett Show on ABC television on June 30, 1971, participating in a debate about war atrocities.
On May 30, 1971, local and state police awoke and arrested 441 demonstrators, including Kerry, for trespassing. All were given the Miranda Warning and were hauled away on school buses to spend the night at the Lexington Public Works Garage. Kerry and the other protesters later paid a $5 fine, and were released.
In 1972 Kerry ran for a seat in the House of Representatives, losing to the only Republican to be elected to Congress that November in a district carried by Democratic Presidential nominee George McGovern. In September 1973, he entered Boston College Law School. He received his Juris Doctor (J.D.) from Boston College in 1976. After passing the bar exam and being admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1976, he went to work in that office as a full-time prosecutor. In January 1977, he was promoted to First Assistant District Attorney.
In 1979, Kerry resigned from the District Attorney's office to set up a private law firm. He re-entered electoral politics by running for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts and won a narrow victory in the 1982 Democratic primary. The ticket, with Michael Dukakis as the gubernatorial candidate, won the general election.
The junior U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, Paul Tsongas, announced in 1984 that he would be stepping down for health reasons. Kerry decided to run for the seat. He was elected to the Senate despite a nationwide landslide for the re-election of Republican president Ronald Reagan, for whom Massachusetts voted by a narrow margin. Early in his senate career he chaired the Kerry Committee report which investigated the Iran Contra drug links, a precursor to the Iran-Contra affair.
On November 15, 1988, at a businessmen's breakfast in East Lynn, Massachusetts, Kerry made a joke about then-President-elect George H.W. Bush and his running mate, saying "if Bush is shot, the Secret Service has orders to shoot Dan Quayle." He apologized the following day.
In 1996, Kerry faced a difficult re-election fight against Governor William Weld, a popular Republican incumbent. He won re-election with 53 percent to Weld's 45 percent. In the 2000 presidential election, Kerry found himself close to being chosen as the vice presidential running mate.
During the first term of President George W. Bush, Kerry supported Bush both on the war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. Kerry said on October 9, 2002 "I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." Kerry also gave a January 23, 2003 speech to Georgetown University saying "Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator; leading an oppressive regime he presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real." Kerry had spoken before the war about the sorts of weapons many believed Saddam Hussein had. On the Senate floor on October 9, 2002, he said that "According to the CIA's report, all U.S. intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons. There is little question that Saddam Hussein wants to develop nuclear weapons." But after the invasion of Iraq, when no weapons of mass destruction were found, Kerry strongly criticized Bush, contending that Bush had misled the country.
Kerry announced his candidacy for President in 2004, but initially was not considered a favorite. In the 2004 Democratic Presidential primaries, Kerry surprised many by defeating several Democratic rivals, including Sen. John Edwards (D-North Carolina.), former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and retired Army General Wesley Clark. His victory in the Iowa caucuses is considered by pundits to be the tipping point where Kerry revived his sagging campaign. Kerry went on to win landslide victories in a number of primaries on route to victory. On July 6, 2004, he announced his selection of John Edwards as his running mate. Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who was Kerry's 2004 campaign adviser, wrote an article in Time magazine claiming that after the election, Kerry had said that he wished he'd never picked Edwards, and that the two have since stopped speaking to each other. In a subsequent appearance on ABC's This Week, Kerry refused to respond to Shrum's allegation, calling it a "ridiculous waste of time."
During his bid to be elected president in 2004, Kerry frequently criticized President George W. Bush for the Iraq War. While Kerry had initially voted in support of authorizing President Bush to use force in dealing with Saddam Hussein, he voted against an $87 billion supplemental appropriations bill to pay for the subsequent war. His statement on March 16, 2004, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it,” helped the Bush campaign to label Kerry as a "flip-flopper" and has been cited as contributing to Kerry’s defeat. Even a superior debate performance did not seem to help Kerry's campaign.
On November 3, 2004, Kerry conceded the race. Kerry won 59.03 million votes, or 48.3 percent of the popular vote; Bush won 62.04 million votes, or 50.7 percent of the popular vote. Kerry carried states with a total of 251 electoral votes to Bush's 286.
Following the election, Kerry established a separate political action committee, Keeping America's Promise, which declared as its mandate "A Democratic Congress will restore accountability to Washington and help change a disastrous course in Iraq". Through Keeping America's Promise in 2005, Kerry raised over $5.5 million for other Democrats up and down the ballot. Through his campaign account and his political action committee, the Kerry campaign operation generated more than $10 million for various party committees and 179 candidates for the US House, Senate, state and local offices in 42 states focusing on the midterm elections during the 2006 election cycle.
On October 30, 2006, Kerry was a headline speaker at a campaign rally being held for Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. Speaking to an audience composed mainly of college students, Kerry said, "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." The day after the remarks were made public, leaders from both sides of the political spectrum criticized Kerry's remarks, which he said were a botched joke. Republicans including President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain and then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, said that Kerry's comments were insulting to American military forces fighting in Iraq. Democratic Representative Harold Ford, Jr. called on Kerry to apologize. Kerry initially stated: "Let me make it crystal clear, as crystal clear as I know how. I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy." Kerry said that he had intended the remark as a jab at President Bush, and described the remarks as a "botched joke", and that he had inadvertently left out the key word "us" (which would have been, "If you don't, you get us stuck in Iraq"). After two days of media coverage, citing a desire not to be a diversion, Kerry apologized to those who took offense at what he called the misinterpretation of his comment.
On January 10, 2008, Kerry endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama for President. He was considered as a possible Vice Presidential candidate for Senator Obama, and after Senator Joe Biden was eventually chosen for the second spot on the ticket, speculation arose that John Kerry would be a candidate for Secretary of State in the Obama administration. That would not happen until Obama's second term.
On December 15, 2012, several news outlets reported that President Barack Obama would nominate Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, after Susan Rice, who was believed to be Obama's preferred choice, withdrew her name from consideration following criticism of her response to the 2012 Benghazi attack. On December 21 Obama nominated Kerry for the position, which received positive commentary. His confirmation hearing took place on January 24, 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The committee unanimously voted to approve him on January 29, 2013, and the same day the full Senate confirmed him on a vote of 94-3. In a letter to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Kerry announced his resignation from the Senate effective February 1. Kerry was sworn in as Secretary of State on February 1, 2013.
Kerry was U.S. secretary of state throughout the second term of the Obama administration from 2013 to 2017. During his tenure, he initiated the 2013-2014 Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and negotiated agreements restricting the nuclear program of Iran, including the 2013 Joint Plan of Action and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In 2015, Kerry signed the Paris Agreement on climate change on behalf of the United States.
At the end of the Obama administration in January 2017, Kerry remained active in public affairs from 2017 to 2021 as a vocal opponent of Obama's successor, President Donald Trump. Kerry returned to government in January 2021, becoming the first person to hold the new position of U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, under Joe Biden.