John Kerry

It is over who gets these assignments. It is not as if the departments have no one running them. They do. They have the career foreign service people, who likely do the bulk of the real work anyway - temporarily heading the organizations.

The author is a foreign policy writer, whose sources are the people wanting these jobs. It is not clear to me what is not getting done. In fact, you ignore that Obama has had some foreign policy success this term. He/Kerry helped Turkey and Israel reestablish relations. I suspect that some of his sources want to insure that Kerry does not outshine Hillary as SOS or completely eliminate any lingering views that Rice would have been a better choice.

Now, if this were June and there were many ambassadors not confirmed and many assistant secretaries not named, then there would be an issue. But the fact is Kerry has been SOS for just two months - and he has excelled as the top diplomat.