Kerry: Obama 'Will Go Down In History' For 'Highest Standards Of Transparency' --Laugh track?

By Jeryl Bier, May 23, 2014, Weeklystandard.com

The same day President Obama held a press conference about the growing scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Secretary of State John Kerry faced the press in Mexico at a joint appearance with Mexican foreign secretary Jose Antonio Meade. Kerry was in the country to discuss trade, economic growth, higher education, and security cooperation, but a reporter asked Kerry some pointed questions about President Obama and his policies and actions regarding surveillance and deportation. Kerry responded with unequivocal support for the president, beginning, "Well, I believe President Obama will go down in history as the president who has held himself and his administration accountable to the highest standards of transparency and accountability."

President Barack Obama
Official White House Photo

In answering the reporter's assertion that President Obama would be "going into history as the president that has deported the most migrants," Kerry said the Obama administration's relationship with the Mexican government has been "productive on cross-border issues, on immigration issues, extradition issues, deportation issues," but that things wouldn't "change overnight." (Secretary Meade added later that the two countries need a "more structured dialogue so we can talk about migration, security in a framework of the right of migrants.")

Apparently in response to the reporter's statements about "spying" and "wired" phone calls, Kerry suggested, "everybody here knows President Obama didn’t order [what was happening] because he was in the Senate – and not even in the Senate – when much of this was put in place." Kerry invoked privacy standards that he had authored with Senator McCain that he said influenced new rules that President Obama had recently established, and said that the president would be "measured as having taken the most extraordinary steps of any president in our history in order to try to put that [security and protection and prevention versus privacy] relationship back in balance." Kerry placed President Obama at the top of the list of all presidents for transparency in this regard, saying, "No President, I think, in our history has laid open as willingly for everybody to judge what we are doing as a guideline or as a standard by which we are going to try to balance this equity between security and protection and prevention versus privacy and respect for the rights of all of our citizens."

Kerry closed his remarks with the assurance that "the people of the United States and the people of Mexico should be pleased with the direction that we’re moving in. It’s open, it’s transparent, it’s accountable, and it’s productive. And I think we’re headed in the right direction."

A complete transcript (via the State Department) of the exchange between Secretary Kerry and the reporter is as follows:

QUESTION: (Via interpreter) This is a question for Secretary Kerry. When President Pena came into office, the level that he would have with the United States was questionable, especially in terms of unity. After one year and a half, what do you think about the relationship of this administration with the United States?

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