Kerry part of a conversation panel at the the Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2010 event

[Mass]

(The comment on Kerry's photo on the slideshow is worthwhile: For being the adult on Capitol Hill

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/11/30/foreign_policy_honors_the_global_thinkers_of_2010

Tonight, the staff of Foreign Policy is getting all gussied up to celebrate our 40th anniversay by honoring the Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2010 at a special event at Washington's Corcoran Gallery of Art.

The evening will include a special conversation moderated by PBS news anchor Gwen Ifill featuring Ahmet Davutoglu, foreign minister of Turkey, Celso Amorim, foreign minister of Brazil, John Kerry, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Shai Agassi, electric-car entrepreneur and CEO of Better Place. The event will also feature a special tribute to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, one of the first editors of Foreign Policy.

We are also thrilled and honored to have received a special video message from democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was recently released from two decades under house arrest in Burma.

A number of other prominent members of our list including Energy Secretary Steven Chu, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, Cordoba Initiative Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and more.

The video above, filmed and compiled by our friends at Reuters, features highlights of interviews with the thinkers. Will be featuring more footage from the interview and the event itself in the days event. I'll also have a quick write-up of the panel discussion later tonight.

[ProSense]

1. The list is interesting

but curious.

Ron Paul 19

Elizabeth Warren 24

Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, William Perry, and George Shultz 25

Thomas Friedman 33

John Kerry and Richard Lugar 34

[Mass]

2. Not clear to me what criteria entered in the making of the list.

But I find it interesting, because of its diversity. I was pleased to see there names from Europe and other parts of the world and that would not be in a Time or Newsweek list, next to the obvious names like Bill Gates, the Clintons, or Tom Friedman.

[karynnj]

3. It is curious, but reading some of the reasons, it kind of makes sense

In the case of Ron Paul, they essentially call him the father of the "intellectual" tea party. (a noun and adjective that seem not to go together) It is true that he is a thinker, with a unique (crazy) ideology. But, it is one the competing belief systems of how the world works. I don't buy that the tea party came from Paul type thought - my view is that it represents inchoate anger, mixed with conservative views, inflamed by charlatans like Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity and everything Murdoch. I would have picked Murdoch as the father of the tea party.

I think Friedman is overrated. His book on Beirut written decades ago was excellent, but he has an annoying tendency to take ideas of others and act as if no one ever said them before - as he did in the Earth is Flat, where I could list many people who saw the same phenomena earlier and outlined it in columns or speeches - not books. (including Krugman, writing in the same newspaper and with real economic credentials and Kerry, who said the same thing in his speech before the NAFTA vote in 1993! )

Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, William Perry, and George Shultz are all elderly statesman. With Kissinger, enough time has passed to show that most of his big ideas did not work out as expected - Pakistan tilt anyone?

The comments on Kerry are completely without snark and complementary. It is genuinely good that he is gaining the respect that he really should have had years ago - at least after 2004 and the high road campaign with the incredible debates.