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John Kerry is weary. His day began shortly after dawn with a visit to coal miners in Moundsville, West Virginia, then moved on to a speech before workers at a cookware factory in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. Throughout the afternoon, as his "Jobs Tour" campaign bus rolled through Rust Belt country, Kerry stopped to exhort roadside crowds and grasp outstretched hands. Now, with evening near, he's headed down the highway toward Youngstown, Ohio, and an outdoor rally with steelworkers angered by job losses.The Senator is slumped in his seat, fielding a reporter's questions while stealing glances at a television tuned to CNN. The story of the day is not a good one. The TV images are all about Kerry and Vietnam and the ribbons he earned there -- and threw away to protest the war. Kerry's eyes slide over to the screen again and again. "This is absurd, what's going on," he says. "I'm not going to let the President's campaign and this President -- who still cannot prove that he showed up for duty in the National Guard in Alabama -- diminish my service, and my choice to oppose the war, and to do with my medals what I want to do."
His anger suggests something more than just wounded honor. Kerry has been in plenty of political wars, and he knows when the battleground of a campaign has shifted. This Jobs Tour is all about slamming the Bush economy, but as that picture brightens, it's looking more and more likely that the election will hinge on the issue of war. Iraq is in turmoil, with American soldiers squarely in the cross hairs. U.S. troops are still battling terrorists in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Al Qaeda may be poised to strike again on our soil. Both political parties understand what all this means. While daunting issues face the next President, from the federal deficit to the outsourcing of jobs to the staggering cost of health care, nothing will mean more to voters than the answer to this question: Which man can keep the country safe in these perilous times?
Like every Presidential challenger, John Kerry must somehow define himself to the public before others define him first. Already he's playing catch-up. Pundits and partisans regularly characterize him as an opportunist lacking core beliefs. The online magazine Slate, hardly conservative, ran an article recently with this headline: "John Kerry's Waffles -- If you don't like the Democratic nominee's views, just wait a week." Over the years, Slate noted, Kerry has shifted position on issues such as welfare reform, affirmative action and free trade. His supporters say this reflects his intellectual honesty as he grapples with complex issues and changing conditions. Detractors say he bends with the political winds.
When Republicans go for the jugular, they zero in on Kerry's record on defense. In a speech last March, Vice President Dick Cheney lambasted Kerry for voting against the first Gulf War in 1991, against an $87 billion appropriation to help fund the U.S. war effort in Iraq, and against weapons systems such as the MX missile and the B-1 bomber. "The Senator from Massachusetts has given us ample doubts about his judgment on vital issues of national security," Cheney said.
This charge, echoed in Republican TV ads, infuriates Kerry. "Look, let's be clear," he says. "They've spent $70 million at the end of this week just trying to destroy me. Now, if people are going to accuse me of not caring about the defense of my country, I mean, what a stupid thing to say about somebody who's been in the Senate for 20 years, fought for his country, and voted for 16 out of 19 [defense] appropriations bills."
"I'm going out there and introduce myself to the American people," he adds, convinced they'll find that he offers "a real choice about real issues." Some Democrats worry the public will decide something else -- that he's deadly dull. "Al Gore, but without the charisma," is one jibe making its way around the Internet.
To understand where Kerry stands today, consider where he's been. The man who insisted for months that President Bush reach out to other nations for help in Iraq was a boy who spent part of his childhood immersed in other cultures.
Born into a family with patrician roots in Massachusetts, Kerry moved with his parents and three siblings to tensely divided Berlin in 1954 (where his father was a lawyer for the State Department), and soon after got packed off to a boarding school near Zurich, Switzerland. By the time Kerry returned to America, alone, to attend prep schools in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, he had traveled throughout Europe.
You might say his multilateral focus was bred into him. Not surprisingly, Kerry thinks Bush hasn't done nearly enough to repair relations with countries that opposed the Iraq war, such as France and Germany. "It's going to take a new President, and a breath of fresh air, to re-establish credibility with them," he says.
Aware that a lot of Americans still resent France for defying the Bush Administration in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, some conservatives have been plopping a beret on the Democratic nominee by referring to the French-speaking Senator as "Monsieur Kerry."
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