The U.S. State Department now concedes that Secretary of State John Kerry was aboard his yacht in Nantucket Sound while chaos was erupting this past week in Egypt.
My question is this: So what?
The coverage of this revelation reminds me a bit of when then-President George H.W. Bush was tooling off the Maine coast in his speedboat while our troops went to war in the Persian Gulf in 1990 and early 1991. Then, as now, I asked: So what?
Presidents and secretaries of state have their ears open, along with heavily secured channels of communication. As Kerry was sailing the sound, his staff was keeping him informed fully of happenings in Tahrir Square in Cairo and eventually when the Egyptian military took control of the government, toppling President Mohamed Morsy from power.
There no doubt will be pot shots taken at Kerry, just as there were shots taken at Bush two decades ago. It was an unfair criticism of the president then and it would be equally unfair to gig the secretary of state.
Twenty-first-century communications are marvelous things.