United States Secretary of State of state have gone on to be elected president. Others, including Henry Clay, William Seward, James Blaine, William Jennings Bryan, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton have been unsuccessful presidential candidates, either before or after their term of office as Secretary of State. The nature of the position means that Secretaries of State engage in travel around the world. The record for most countries visited in a secretary's tenure is 112 by Hillary Clinton. Second is Madeleine Albright with 96. The record for most air miles traveled in a secretary's tenure is 1,417,576 miles by John Kerry. Second is Condoleezza Rice's
Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State Richard Nixon for Secretary of HUD in 1968, and Philander Knox by William Howard Taft for Secretary of State in 1908 preceded her; Obama's pick of Tom Vilsack for Secretary of Agriculture followed her a couple of weeks later to be the next such person). During the Obama presidential transition, Clinton described her own transition as "difficult ... in some respects, because [she] never even dreamed of it." Then, and in the early days of her tenure, there was considerable jockeying for jobs within the department among those in "Hillaryland", her longtime circle of advisors and staff aides, as well