Speaking with staff of the American Embassy in Paris, Secretary of State John Kerry explained that he was glad he was no longer a U.S. Senator.

“I am now officially a recovering politician,” Kerry said as the crowd laughed. “And I’ll tell you, it feels great. I don’t have to get – go out and raise money and do all those things.”

Kerry added that he was glad that as Secretary of State he could focus on foreign policy by traveling and building relationships with foreign countries around the world.

“I’ll tell you a story about why – one of the reasons why – I’m so happy to be doing this and not what I was doing before,” Kerry said, relating a time when as a Senator he met someone in the airport who didn’t recognize him.

Kerry said that man asked him if anyone ever told him that he looked like “that Kerry guy we sent down to Washington”

“I said, “Yeah. They tell me that all the time,” Kerry said as the crowd laughed. “He looks at me and says, ‘Makes you kind of mad, don’t it?’”