I wonder what this was and whether it will reappear...

[Luftmensch067]

Just got this on my Google News Alert:

Kerry brings diplomacy to debt panel
Boston Globe
John Kerry will just keep his head down and do his job.'' To some, Kerry
seemed ill-suited to the committee. Although he has extensive foreign
policy credentials, he's not seen as someone who immerses himself deeply in
details of budgeting, ...
<http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2011/08/22/kerry_brings_diplomacy_to_debt_panel>
See all stories on this topic:
<http://news.google.com/news/story?ncl=http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2011/08/22/kerry_brings_diplomacy_to_debt_panel&hl=en&geo=us>

The first link goes to an error page -- no article.

The second link, the Google aggregate link, has this:

Kerry brings diplomacy to debt panel
Boston Globe - Theo Emery - ‎7 hours ago‎
WASHINGTON - Senator John F. Kerry is no stranger to seemingly intractable diplomatic snarls. He flew to Islamabad to soothe tense Pakistani-US relations after the killing of Osama bin Laden. He walked the palace grounds of Afghanistan's ...

which leads to the same broken link/Globe error page. Looks like something was published and then pulled. And it looks like it was possibly positive. Maybe it's being rewritten and will be reposted. I hope so!

[MBS]

1. here it is

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2011/08/22/debt_panel_to_test_senator_kerrys_diplomacy/
From a quick scan, this leaped out at me:

One of his first calls was to Alan K. Simpson, the former GOP senator from Wyoming who last fall led a presidential debt commission bearing his name. Simpson said that Kerry always impressed him by not “hiding under the rug’’ for tough votes.
“He’s serious business, and he knows foreign policy, he knows domestic policy. He’s a hell of a hand, as we say in Wyoming,’’ Simpson said

[Luftmensch067]

2. Thanks so much for finding the article!

I think it's a good one.

[karynnj]

4. Me too - Though it makes sense that Simpson was one of the first people he called, my reaction was

"uggh". Simpson's praise is well deserved and it is what people should have seen in 2004 and it countered the "he's a foreign policy expert, not domestic policy" stuff. (After all he was not randomly put on the Finance committee and - from hearings - he is always interesting and well prepared.) But, it would be remiss NOT to speak to the two people who just headed a committee charged with the a similar task to get their experience. It might be too much time on DU, but my first reaction was "oh great - who is going to post that and pretend that it means Kerry is in agreement with the ultra conservative Simpson!"

But his comment is very high praise. I liked the not "hiding under the rug" comment - though for me it brought back a silly memory of my oldest at 3 trying to do just that because the phrase was in a Raffi song ( Teddy bear hugs - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sIq68kh1po )!

The comments as always are pathetic - but interesting that the negatives were all from the right.

[Mass]

3. Good article, but that does nothing to assuage my concerns.

Yes, it may be that Kerry has skills to get a compromise, but which compromise? This is what I do not hear and frankly this is very bothering. The summary dismissal of Borosage bothers me. It would be easy to answer by stating some basic principles of what the Dems will oppose. They are clearly unwilling to do that.

[karynnj]

5. The committee has yet to meet, so it may be that it is premature

for there to be any specifics of a compromise to be even be floated yet. There are no direct quotes of Kerry ruling anything in or out - anywhere. I think the Senate speeches he has given this year related to this issue give some view into what he thinks reasonable, but it is impossible to go from there to how much he would move to avoid the triggers.

One thing I haven't seen in any detail is what the trigger actually would result in. In addition, the question is whether Congress could revoke the triggers - and whether ANY Republicans would favor that. If the answer is that the trigger can not or will not be revoked, the test of any compromise must be not whether it is worse than where we are, but whether it is worse than what the trigger would do.

I suspect that this is why that committee really is a political suicide mission - at least for the Democrats.