Kerry Takes a Personal Approach to Mideast Peace AMMAN, Jordan - Traveling around the Middle East with Secretary of State John Kerry, particularly for a reporter whose last State Department tour was with Hillary Rodham Clinton, is a seat-of-the-pants experience. Itineraries are notional. Improvisation is the rule. In the last 24 hours, Mr. Kerry's aides warned that he might fly back to Israel after his stop in Jordan, then minutes later said that was a false alarm. The next morning they confirmed that he would, in fact, travel to Tel Aviv on Friday for breakfast with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after dinner here with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. And after that? Who can say? Mr. Kerry seems perfectly willing to upend his schedule based on his instinct that staying a little longer, holding another meeting, flying to another capital, can nudge forward peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Shuttle diplomacy, of course, is nothing new in this part of the world. But after President Obama's first term, when Mrs. Clinton delegated these Middle East milk runs to a special envoy and kept the peace process in general at arm's length, it is striking to watch a secretary of state grinding it out in this unforgiving arena. "What separates John Kerry from Hillary is that he's put himself in the middle of the mix," said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East peace negotiator who is now a vice president at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Still, it is not clear whether Mr. Kerry's exertions will make these talks any more fruitful than previous efforts, including the unsuccessful one that Mrs. Clinton oversaw during Mr. Obama's first term. The mood in Jerusalem and on the West Bank has deteriorated since the talks resumed in late July, with Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas squabbling over issues like Jewish settlements and blaming each other for the lack of progress. None of this seems to deter Mr. Kerry. On Thursday, he told King Abdullah II of Jordan that his talks had "created some clarity on some of the points." He later declined to say what those were, invoking the vow of secrecy that all the parties to the talks have taken. "What happened here over the course of the last days has opened up a number of different possibilities," Mr. Kerry said, adding that he still believed a deal could be reached within the nine-month timetable he set when he persuaded the two sides to come back to the table. Mr. Kerry's caffeinated style is emblematic of how he has redefined the secretary's job - moving it away from the town-hall-style meetings and public diplomacy that characterized Mrs. Clinton's tenure and toward a dogged emphasis on a handful of issues. Most prominent of those issues is the peace process, which Mr. Kerry has single-handedly kept on the list of the White House's foreign policy priorities. His eagerness, Mr. Miller said, stems from being in a different place than Mrs. Clinton and serving a changed White House. For Mr. Kerry, this job is the capstone of his career, a post he coveted second only to the presidency, and his aides say he is willing to take considerable risks to cement his legacy as a peacemaker. For Mrs. Clinton, who still has a potential presidential run in her future, secretary of state was a steppingstone, allowing her to burnish her credentials but also carrying potential risks, not least in the politically charged terrain of the Middle East. While Mrs. Clinton dutifully made the rounds, she rarely took a big gamble on the peace process. She also had a more complicated relationship with Mr. Obama, particularly in the first two years of his administration, when the wounds of the 2008 Democratic primary campaign were fresh and the White House seemed determined to keep a tight leash on core foreign policy issues. Mr. Kerry, by contrast, is working for a White House preoccupied by the health care rollout and facing a cascade of crises, from Syria to the disclosures about National Security Agency surveillance. Though the White House keeps a close tab on issues like the nuclear negotiations with Iran, Mr. Obama's aides appear willing, if not eager, to give Mr. Kerry the freedom to pursue a long-shot bid for peace in the Middle East. "There are just too many issues out there that need managing, that could affect Obama's legacy negatively," Mr. Miller said. So Kerry has become the energizer bunny of U.S. diplomacy by circumstance, necessity and design - giving him a shot to be a consequential secretary of state. For all the talk of peacemaking, the Israeli-Palestinian issue occupies a peculiar place in the Obama administration. Mindful of raising expectations too high, the president did not bring the leaders together at the White House to inaugurate this round of talks, as he did in 2010. Any peace accord would be a victory for him as well as for Mr. Kerry, but unlike Iran, for example, he has not been heavily engaged in the process. In a Middle East policy review conducted last summer by the president's national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, the peace process made the list of top-tier priorities - along with Iran and Syria - but largely because Mr. Kerry had already thrown himself into it and the White House did not want to undermine the secretary of state. Early in his tenure, Mr. Kerry's zeal occasionally caused some concern in the White House. But as time goes on, Mr. Obama's aides have become more appreciative of his energy. It did not hurt that his seemingly offhand suggestion that the Syrian government could avert an American military strike by turning over its chemical weapons set in motion a diplomatic solution that ended up being a lifeline for his boss. Mr. Kerry, meanwhile, brushes off suggestions that after 222,000 miles of travel and eight visits to the Middle East this year alone, he is tired. "The alternative is what?" he asked Israeli and Palestinian journalists before a joint interview Thursday. Watching TV?