Opinion: Hairy Kerry rises to chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee

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You’ll never guess who was just named the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The same fellow who sternly testified there nearly four decades ago with a posse of other anti-Vietnam war protesters.

Massachusetts’ own junior senator John Kerry, the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for president in 2004, who testified before the same committee in 1971 as a veteran.

Kerry, who’s been on the committee awaiting his turn for 23 years, replaces Delaware’s own Joe Biden, who reportedly is becoming the new vice president on Jan. 20 on the Democratic presidential ticket with former senator Barack Obama.

Biden has been in the Senate since the new president was 11 years old; Biden hates when people point that out. But it shows what a longtime Washington veteran he is.

In a shocking statement released by Kerry’s office (he’s traveling in Pakistan), the new chairman said he was ‘honored’ to become the new head of such an important committee, which is decided by seniority. ‘We have a big agenda ahead of us,’ he added.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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