Poor Thomas Jefferson.
In all the political biographies written about the third US president and first secretary of state (1790-1793), including Jon Meacham's wonderful Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, not once was it noted that Jefferson was one of only a handful of US secretaries of state who was not blamed by Israel and/or the Arabs for their diplomatic "peace process" failings and shortcomings.
Historically, this is of course a wild exaggeration. But if you do list all US secretaries of state since Israel's Independence in 1948 (the first was George Marshall), through John Foster Dulles, William Rogers, Henry Kissinger, Warren Christopher, Madeline Albright, Colin Powell — to name some victims — up to the current secretary, John F. Kerry, only a select few were spared Israeli and Palestinian hostility, resentment, criticism and subsequent grudges.
Extraordinarily, some spent their entire tenure without any friction in the Middle East. Charles Bohlen, for example. He was acting secretary Jan. 20-22, 1969. Or Kenneth Rush, Sept. 3-22 1973. Particularly fortunate was Richard Cooper, who spent the entire day of May 3, 1980, as acting US secretary of state without getting any flak from Israel or the Palestinians for underachieving or being over-ambitious or presenting an unacceptable peace plan. Luckily for Cooper, May 4 was a Saturday. What a relief.
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