Obama to Nominate Kerry as Secretary of State; House GOP Rejects Boehner's Plan B; Kerry Kennedy Fights for Gun Control
SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Suzanne Malveaux. In just minutes, the president is going to make what the White House is calling a personnel announcement. We have confirmed it is the formal nomination of Senator John Kerry to be the next secretary of state. Stay with CNN. You're going to see it live as it happens. We're expecting that about 1:30 Eastern. Senator Kerry always on the short list to replace Hillary Clinton, but after Susan Rice removed herself from consideration last week, he removed up to the odds-on favorite. Kate Bolduan reports some of the fellow senators were already calling him Mr. Secretary.</s>JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.</s>KATE BOLDUAN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): His Senate colleagues have joked about his ambition, what many regarded as the worst-kept secret in Washington. Even in recent Senate hearings, John Kerry already sounded like he was looking ahead to his future job and the anticipated battles over the State Department budget with Congress.</s>SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: That must change and in the next session of the Congress, I hope it will.</s>BOLDUAN: He wasn't the first choice. U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, took herself out of the running after the Republican backlash.</s>SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: It was unjustified to give the scenario as presented by ambassador Rice.</s>BOLDUAN: Senator Kerry knows himself about being torpedoed by attacks, accused in his 2004 presidential run of lying about his military record in Vietnam.</s>GEORGE ELLIOTT: John Kerry had not been honest about what happened in Vietnam.</s>BOLDUAN: And criticized for his 1971 testimony opposing the Vietnam war.</s>KERRY: How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam?</s>BOLDUAN: Kerry was painted a flip-flopper and out of touch, unable to grasp the struggles of regular Americans. But candidate Kerry did put President Obama, then an unknown politician, on the national stage at the Democratic convention.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: John Kerry believes that in a dangerous world, war must be an option sometimes, but it should never be the first option.</s>BOLDUAN: Following the loss, Kerry immersed himself in foreign policy.</s>KERRY: We stand adjourned.</s>BOLDUAN: Now the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he's been an unofficial envoy for President Obama, helping ease tension with President Karzai in Afghanistan and helping mend strained relations in Pakistan after the killing of Osama Bin Laden.</s>KERRY: We are strategic partners with a common enemy in terrorism and extremism.</s>BOLDUAN: But Kerry is not totally in sync with Obama. He has supported limited intervention in Syria, something the president has resisted. Over his 30-year career, Kerry has built deep relationships with many foreign leaders.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are very few people in our country with greater experience over a longer period of time in foreign policy than senator Kerry.</s>BOLDUAN (on camera): Perhaps Kerry's biggest challenge to date is not his confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill, but rather following in Hillary Clinton's footsteps who has become one of the most popular officials in the Obama cabinet both here and abroad. Kate Bolduan, CNN, Washington.</s>MALVEAUX: Our Elise Labott joins us at the State Department. Elise, give us a sense of some of the real big issues, the big concerns that he's going to walk into if he is confirmed.</s>ELISE LABOTT, CNN FOREIGN AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think, Suzanne, clearly the Middle East and all of the issues surrounding that. You have what's going on in Egypt with President Morsi and questions about his commitment to democracy, certainly the crisis in Syria and how the U.S. is going to A, get rid of president Bashar al Assad, and B, help stand up the Syrian people and help them recover once Assad is out. The crisis in Iran with its nuclear program and trying to get a deal this year, 2013 is seen as a real pivotal year in terms of having to deal with Iran's nuclear program. And then you have what's going on in Asia. Just last week, you had North Korea testing that long-range missile, there are a lot of questions about what's going on with the leader there. And this whole U.S. pivot to Asia and trying to work more cooperatively with countries in the region to counter China. So certainly, senator Kerry, if he becomes the next secretary of state, will have a full plate.</s>MALVEAUX: What is he like in terms of his personality? I covered him in 2004 when he was running for president in George W. Bush, and he was widely panned as somebody who was not really able to relate or identify to everyday folks. But he has quite a reputation overseas and abroad.</s>LABOTT: Overseas and abroad, he has a reputation for really knowing his issues. This is a man, as Kate Bolduan said, has relationships with a lot of world leaders. It was senator John Kerry who convinced Afghan President Hamid Karzai to go for a runoff election when the Afghan presidential elections were in question. And I think he's going to be able to relate to leaders such as secretary Clinton did as a politician when these leaders are having problems compromising to say, listen, I'm in your seat, I know where you've been, I've run for office before and it's difficult. And I think that that will really serve him well. Here in Washington, he is seen as someone who is very confident, very on top of his brief, but also someone who likes to control issues when he's really interested in an issue such as the Middle East. He's someone who's -- drills down and really tries to command things. When you're going to be running an agency of 10s of thousands of people, senator Kerry, if he becomes secretary, will really have to delegate and reach out to the expertise in the building. So, I think that's a big question if he comes over here.</s>MALVEAUX: All right, Elise Labott. Thank you, Elise. I want to bring in Dana Bash on the Hill there. Dana, give us a little bit about the back story here. I know there was a little bit of back and forth because everyone was looking at Susan Rice, and then you have senator Kerry.</s>DANA BASH, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. It was -- I think you and I have talked about this. It was a little bit awkward for a while here in the halls of the Senate because the big question was whether or not Susan Rice could even get through and she would have to get through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and John Kerry is the chairman of that committee. And so, people, like me, were going up to John Kerry asking, can Susan Rice actually get through? When -- what do you think about it? And it was very awkward and he would look at us like, are you really asking me that question because it was an open secret that he wanted this job very, very badly. And even over the past week as we, at least Labott reported I think last weekend even, that John Kerry was going to get the nod. We've been waiting and waiting and waiting for it to officially happen. Pretty much every day I would pass him in the hall or in the elevator saying, congratulations, question mark? And he would say, not yet, I haven't heard yet. So, there's definitely been an interesting hurry up and wait game when it comes to senator Kerry.</s>MALVEAUX: Yes. All right. I don't know if we're hurry up and waiting here for the fiscal cliff thing, but let's talk about that because we saw -- and you spoke with speaker John Boehner earlier today, the Plan B basically never made it to the House floor. You've got 10 days and counting before we could potentially face these big tax hikes and these spending cuts. Where do things stand right now?</s>BASH: You know, they're really, really in limbo. Just moments ago, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, came out for the first time on the Senate floor and he really chastised the speaker for wasting a week what he has called a fruitless political stunt. It really was absolutely stunning to see what happened in the House that this -- what was supposed to be a show vote, a political show vote, never got off the ground because the speaker couldn't line up his own -- his own members. But what is going to happen now? I actually just talked to a senior Democratic source who said that for all intents and purposes, the action is probably going to start in the Senate now. And they're actually talking about three possible scenarios, which I'll lay out very quickly. One is just to go off the cliff, because the thinking, among some Democrats, is that when the new Congress is sworn in January third, they'll have a stronger handle, they'll have more seats in the Senate and the House, and they'll be able to maybe do something very quickly. Yes, the markets will probably not react well for that day or two when they're -- when they're -- when they're in, but maybe they could do that. And the second and third scenarios have to do with doing something next week. One is maybe what they call fallback position, take the tax increases for everybody making more than $250,000 and add a few other important tax issues to that. That's only if they can get Republican votes.</s>MALVEAUX: All right.</s>BASH: And then, the other is maybe taking what the president last offered speaker Boehner, the package he last offered which was roughly $2 trillion toward debt relief, and see if they can get enough Republicans on that. But I am told that senator Reid does not want to do anything in this Congress that is not going to pass the House, because he doesn't want Democrats to take the vote that's going to go nowhere.</s>MALVEAUX: All right. We'll be watching closely. Dana, thank you. The gun control debate is also intensifying one week after the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. The killing of 20 innocent children putting the issue back on the national agenda. Just about an hour ago, we heard from the National Rifle Association. The executive director, Wayne LaPierre, called for putting armed police in every school. He also lashed out against the media, violent video games and the lack of prosecutions of violent criminals. He said more gun laws are not the answer.</s>WAYNE LAPIERRE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NRA: The only way, the only way to stop a monster from killing our kids is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.</s>MALVEAUX: The gun debate very personal for my next guest. Her uncle was shot and killed when she was four years old. And when she was eight, a man with a gun killed her father. We are talking about Kerry Kennedy the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and the niece of President John F. Kennedy. She's joining us next to talk about gun violence in this country. The gun debate very personal for my next guest. Her uncle was shot and killed when she was 4 years old and when she was eight, a man with a gun killed her father. We are talking about Kerry Kennedy the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and the niece of John Kennedy. She's talking about gun violence