Former rivals consider Hillary Rodham Clinton for State

You could call it a field of dashed dreams.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which convened this morning to consider Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state, is an object lesson on the soaring ambitions of America’s top politicians – and the often deflated realities of their achievements.

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First, there’s Sen. John Kerry, the committee’s new chairman, who unsuccessfully sought the presidency and more recently, the secretary of state post. It is to Kerry’s credit that he opened with a self-effacing joke about the frustrated ambitions of many of those present, including himself.

Acknowledging that one former committee member is president-elect, while its former chairman Joe Biden is vice-president-elect, Kerry cautioned younger committee members not to get “too far ahead of themselves” as “myself, Chris Dodd, Dick Lugar and perhaps Senator Clinton can … attest.”

Sitting directly across from him, of course, was Clinton, who came closest of any of those present to realizing her presidential ambitions before she became her former rival’s choice for secretary of state.

But if Kerry harbors any jealousy of the woman who displaced him as the nation’s top diplomat, he betrayed no hint of it. He invited Chelsea Clinton to sit behind him on the dais (offering her a temporary committee internship like that held years ago by her father), so that her mother could look at her while she testified.

And then he launched into a lovefest about Clinton, praising her as a diplomatic veteran on “first-name basis” with world leaders, declaring, “America is back.”

Not to be outmaneuvered in the graceful acknowledgements department, Clinton herself paid tribute to Ann Dunham, president-elect Barack Obama’s late mother, as she pledged to advance the cause of women and girls around the world, calling Dunham “a pioneer in microfinance in Indonesia.”

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