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 official said, "She's the first secretary who's also been a global rock star. It's allowed her to raise issues on the global agenda in a way that no one before her has been able to do." The divisions between Obama and Clinton that many observers had originally predicted, never happened. Indeed, a writer for "The New York Times Magazine" declared that "Obama and Clinton have instead led the least discordant national-security team in decades, despite enormous challenges on almost every front." In part, this was because Obama and Clinton both approached foreign policy as a largely non-ideological, pragmatic exercise. Nevertheless,