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 "they are both doing outstanding jobs where they are." (In late 2011, however, with Obama's popularity on the decline, White House Chief of Staff William M. Daley did conduct some research into the idea of Clinton replacing Biden, but the notion was dropped when the results showed no appreciable improvement for Obama.) Over the summer of 2010, the stalled Israeli–Palestinian peace process was potentially revived when the various parties involved agreed to direct talks for the first time in a while. While President Obama was the orchestrator of the movement, Secretary Clinton had gone through months of cajoling just to