Kerry: I've Been Liberated from Partisanship!

Secretary of State John Kerry declared in his first overseas trip that he’s finally liberated from the shackles of partisanship.

“This is a great privilege for me to come here and come through London on my first trip as Secretary of State, first trip out of the country, obviously. And now, I am officially a recovering politician,” Kerry told staff at the U.S. Embassy.

“So I am here in my mind as being able to totally liberate myself from anything partisan, which is wonderful. You have no idea. In today’s Washington, that’s a blessing, so I thank the president for that.”

Kerry brushed off the U.S. ambassador’s introduction of the new secretary of State as the Embassy employees’ “new boss.”

“Folks, we all work for the same boss. His name is Barack Obama. He’s president of the United States. I’m not the boss,” Kerry said as he wound up for one of his characteristically long, reminiscing speeches pocked with numerous personal tangents.

“Foreign policy today is much tougher than foreign policy was in the Cold War, throughout the last 50 years of the last century, because all those forces that got tampered down by totalitarianism during the 20th century have all been unleashed. And now you see the sectarianism, the tribalism, and nationalism and these individual aspirations, and it’s tougher with a lot of young people all communicating to each other through the internet and social media, all having these big aspirations and leaders that are fighting against modernity. That’s what’s going on. Not that complicated an equation,” he said.

He told the crew he couldn’t predict how sequestration would exactly affect the overseas stations, but “we’re facing some internal domestic political difficulties that could have some impact on us.”

“One thing I know is you and we together will rise to the occasion and fight back and do the best we can to continue to do what we do, and two, I will do everything in my power to go to Capitol Hill and persuade my colleagues of the vitality and the criticality of everything that you’re doing and we’re doing here. I’m going to fight for you, you fight for us, and we’re in this together and we’ll make it happen,” Kerry said.