John Kerry: “I am now a recovering politician”

From CBS News, February 17, 2012:

Newly confirmed Secretary of State John Kerry joked today that he is a “recovering politician,” relating a funny story about the occasional perils of being such a widely recognized public figure.

Watch the clip:

Are there any intellectual property lawyers who want to represent me in a lawsuit?

UPDATED: February 22, 2012

From today’s Washington Post, writes Al Kamen in an article titled, “John Kerry, a ‘recovering politician’“:

Back when he was running for president in 2003 and 2004, then- Sen. John Kerry was giving speeches ripping into President George W. Bush for spending money overseas and allowing “a preparedness gap” in terms of the fight against terrorism.

“We should not be opening firehouses in Baghdad,” he told a crowd in a Roanoke fire station Feb. 9 2004, “and shutting them in the United States of America.”

But at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville on Wednesday — about a two-hour drive from Roanoke — Kerry made a pitch for not cutting funds for foreign policy and overseas aid, noting that it’s only a bit more than 1 percent of the overall budget.

And “every embassy, every program that saves a child from dirty drinking water, or from AIDS, or reaches out to build a village, and bring America’s values, every person” comes out of that “one penny plus a bit, on a single dollar.”

So why do people criticize foreign aid spending and think it’s a quarter of the budget?

“Well, I’ll tell you,” he said, according to a State Department transcript, “It’s pretty simple. As a recovering politician (laughter) … I can tell you that nothing gets a crowd clapping faster in a lot of places than saying, “I’m going to Washington to get them to stop spending all that money over there.”

Sounds like he’s recovered pretty well.