Time is running out for John Kerry.

With less than six months until a new president takes office, the U.S. secretary of state is working furiously to reach a political settlement in Syria, hold together the international coalition fighting the Islamic State, and tame a Russian bear prowling in Syria and Ukraine.


Friends and allies say the energetic 72-year-old shows no sign of letting up, and he has made no evident plans for a post-government life after a three-decade political career that brought him to the brink of the presidency itself in 2004. Some Kerry admirers even hope that Hillary Clinton, if elected in November, might find a place for the indefatigable diplomat in her State Department.

Several sources said they believe Kerry might welcome staying in the diplomatic fray and that his institutional knowledge would be valuable, either if he stays on as secretary or as a special envoy tasked with a specific issue in which he is deeply versed, like Syria, Iran, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They note that when Clinton came to the State Department in 2009, she named high-profile designated fixers for Iran, Afghanistan-Pakistan, and the Middle East peace process.

“Could [Kerry] continue in some specific role? Yeah. That’s an advantage where you have a friendly takeover as opposed to a hostile takeover, where he could continue to serve in some capacity,” said P.J. Crowley, a former State Department spokesman under Clinton.

But Crowley and several other current and former U.S. officials and foreign diplomats interviewed for this story did not consider it likely that Kerry would remain at State under a Hillary Clinton presidency.

Clinton has a deep bench of highly qualified allies, they say. She may also be eager to give the State Department a more apolitical face. Her senior adviser, Jake Sullivan, has recently wooed anti-Trump Republicans by telling them Clinton hopes to restore bipartisan consensus around foreign policy issues like Iran and Israel. Many Republicans see Kerry, a former Democratic senator and presidential nominee, as more of a politician than a diplomat.

The most recent president to replace a two-term White House occupant from the same party was George H.W. Bush, who succeeded President Ronald Reagan in 1989. Bush named his close friend James Baker as secretary of state the morning after he was elected in November 1988. Baker succeeded George P. Shultz, who served as Reagan’s top diplomat for 6½ years.

But whereas Baker was long seen as Bush’s obvious choice for the top diplomatic job, sources in and around the State Department believe the Democratic nominee, should her current lead in the polls translate into a November victory, would choose among several candidates with strong credentials.

The list includes two people who served in senior roles under Clinton when she herself was secretary of state. One is William Burns, a career diplomat who served as deputy secretary of state from 2011 2014, and whose appointment could send a message of nonpartisanship. The 60-year-old Burns, who now runs the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is a soft-spoken Foreign Service veteran who held top posts in both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations and has avoided controversy. It helps that he is personally close with Jake Sullivan, with whom he traveled to Oman and Switzerland for secret talks with Iran that led to the July 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran ultimately concluded by Kerry.

Burns “is loyal, knows the department, is someone whom the Foreign Service trusts, whom she trusts, who is low key," said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator under Bill Clinton and a friend of Burns.

Clinton might also turn to another senior State Department colleague: Wendy Sherman, who served as under secretary of state for political affairs until last summer. Now at a global consulting firm, Sherman advises Clinton’s campaign and oversaw the Democratic Party platform’s foreign policy language for the Clinton team. She was also the lead U.S. negotiator with Iran from 2013 to 2015, and the hundreds of hours she spent dueling with Iranian diplomats won her admirers in Democratic foreign policy circles. But she has few fans among Republican critics of the nuclear deal. Tapping Sherman could mean a tough Senate confirmation process — particularly if Democrats fail to win back the Senate in November.

“People on the Hill either love her or hate her,” said one former administration official of Sherman. If confirmed, Sherman would be the fourth woman to hold the job since the mid-1990s.

Perhaps more palatable to Republicans would be Nicholas Burns, who like William Burns (no relation) is a career Foreign Service officer, and who was a top official in the George W. Bush administration, serving as under secretary of state for political affairs. Burns, now at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, has endorsed and advises Clinton. He also defends Clinton in regular media appearances, something likely to endear him to Clinton’s team, but which draws quips that he is auditioning for the Foggy Bottom job .

When it comes to a personal relationship with the Clintons, few people can beat Strobe Talbott, a close friend of both Bill and Hillary Clinton who served as deputy secretary of state during Bill’s presidency. The 70-year-old Talbott, a former Time magazine reporter who now runs the Brookings Institution in Washington, has known Bill since the two were Rhodes Scholars together in the late 1960s. As president, Bill Clinton sometimes dropped in on Talbott’s suburban Washington home for dinner. Talbott’s area of expertise — Russia — might be particularly valuable at a moment of high tension with Moscow.

Other foreign policy veterans with ties to Clinton include Kurt Campbell, who served as assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in her State Department, and with whom she worked closely on the so-called pivot to Asia. Some sources believe that Obama’s former national security adviser, Tom Donilon, wants the job. Donilon was chief of staff to Warren Christopher, who served as Bill Clinton’s first secretary of state.

Another contender could be the former NATO commander James Stavridis, reportedly a finalist to be Clinton’s running mate. There is precedent for a military man to run the State Department: former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Colin Powell did so in George W. Bush’s first term. But many Democrats and foreign service officers believe the military has encroached on traditional diplomatic roles over the past decade, and they might object to putting a general in the job.

John Kerry, seen watching tennis at the Olympics in Brazil on Saturday, continues to travel the globe at age 72. | AP Photo

None of these candidates is seen as distinctly ideological, and some foreign policy insiders said Clinton will mostly likely choose someone to implement her foreign policy vision, not to come up with one of their own.

“She has had this job, she knows what’s required to get it done, and I think she’s going to want to exercise a lot of influence — as she should,” said Miller.

That might also be an argument against extending the headstrong Kerry’s tenure — even if his departure means the loss of tremendous institutional knowledge and personal relationships from Tehran to Amman to Moscow.

“Kerry is involved in a number of ongoing diplomatic initiatives, most crucially Syria. Anyone who replaces him will inevitably have a learning curve, even if they’ve been involved in foreign policy at a senior level before. That learning curve could be a reason to keep Kerry on for a period of time,” said one senior administration official.

“But here is a sense that Clinton will want to put her own mark on that job,” the official added.

It’s far from certain that Kerry would want to carry on after four grueling years of constant travel. Or that he would relish a narrower job focused on a potentially dead-end mission like Syria or the Middle East peace process.

“The Secretary serves at the pleasure of the President. He remains focused on advancing our foreign policy objectives around the world,” said State Department spokesman John Kirby.

“He’s extremely talented and has an enormous amount of energy," said Miller. “But is it really the right move for him? And at the same timeis it really the right move for this administration? People want to shape their administrations with new people.”