Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol on Sunday suggested that Republican senators should confirm United States Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice if she is nominated as secretary of state because she is more likely to support going to war than Sen. John Kerry (D-MA).
The conservative columnist told Fox News host Chris Wallace that Rice had made a mistake by not being more clear that the September attacks in Benghazi were terrorism but Kerry had a history of opposing military intervention.
"I rather think [President Barack Obama] will appoint Susan Rice and I think -- I'm not a huge fan of hers -- but I think she's likely to be confirmed by the Senate," Kristol explained. "And an awful lot of people might decide, you know, given the range of alternative appointments, maybe she's not -- John Kerry, in my opinion, might be a worse secretary of state. Maybe one just goes ahead and lets him have the secretary of state he wants."
"I think Susan Rice has been a little more interventionist than John Kerry," he pointed out. "John Kerry was a guy who loved the Assad regime in Syria. John Kerry has been against our intervening in every war we've intervened in, the first Gulf War. In Iraq, he was for it before he was against it."
But Fox News political analyst Kirsten Powers, who describes herself as a liberal and has accused Obama of sexism for defending Rice, blasted the president over the possible appointment.
"That kind of arrogance -- which is what I think it would be -- could be he undoing," she declared. "If she is put under oath and forced to go through and answer all these questions, I think it's going to put the administration in a really bad position."
