Secretary of state followed by the rest of the Cabinet. President Barack Obama named Hillary Clinton as his choice for 67th Secretary of State on December 1, 2008. She was confirmed on January 21, 2009, the day after Obama's inauguration and is the third woman to hold the position. On December 21, 2012 President Obama announced his choice for Secretary of State during his second term, Senator John Kerry. His confirmation hearing took place on January 24, 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The committee unanimously voted to approve him on January 29, 2013, and the same day the full Senate confirmed
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