WASHINGTON — A day after excoriating critics in a fire-breathing, fist-pounding performance at a tense Senate hearing on Benghazi, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was the picture of good cheer yesterday.
Appearing at Sen. John Kerry’s confirmation hearing, Clinton spoke warmly and fondly of the man President Obama nominated to succeed her at the helm of the State Department.
“With John Kerry, we will be leaving this work in the right hands,” said Clinton, sporting a soft pink jacket and a string of white pearls.
A bit awkwardly, she was seated next to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) — who the previous morning had grilled Clinton over the botched information that the administration initially provided about the attack on the US diplomatic facility in Libya that left four Americans dead.
“The answers, frankly, that you have given this morning are not satisfactory,” McCain scolded Clinton at the Benghazi hearing.
Clinton kept her cool throughout her prepared remarks yesterday, saying her four-year tenure as the nation’s top diplomat has been “one of the great honors of my life.”
Kerry backed up Clinton yesterday when Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin asked if the Massachusetts Democrat would be willing to clarify the timeline of the Benghazi response.
“If you’re trying to get some daylight between me and Secretary Clinton, that’s not going to happen,” Kerry responded.
In an angry exchange on Wednesday, Clinton unloaded on Johnson, saying: “I personally was not focused on talking points. I was focused on keeping our people safe.”
The confirmation of Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who narrowly lost a bid for the presidency to George W. Bush in 2004, is expected to sail through the Senate.
“American foreign policy is not drones and deployments alone,” he said. “Every day that America is unwilling to engage in [diplomacy] is a day in which we weaken the nation itself.”