Kerry sets tone for campaign
By Glen Johnson
Boston Globe Staff
1/13/2003
N.H. - In the living room of a New Hampshire farmhouse, standing before a crackling fire and a crowd of about 75 people, Senator John F. Kerry crossed a threshold this weekend.
''When I'm president of the United States, we're going to have early childhood education,'' he said Friday night to a hearty round of applause.
It was, according to an aide and a reporter who have witnessed nearly every moment of Kerry's fledgling presidential candidacy, the first time the Massachusetts Democrat had uttered such a statement in public, a flat-out declaration based on the assumption he will be elected president. ''It's very real now,'' said the aide.
He was referring to the fact that after a lifetime of some of the finest education, two combat tours in Vietnam, a turn heading antiwar protests, a failed bid for the House, a successful run for lieutenant governor, and three terms as a US senator, the 59-year-old Kerry has finally arrived at the place he has long appeared to be striving for, a presidential candidacy that has triggered indignation among his critics and adulation from his supporters.
It was only a few words, but for a man accused of calculation from the time he filmed his military exploits to the recent shift in his death penalty stance to allow the execution of terrorists only, Kerry's declaration was a bald, unequivocal statement that highlighted the latest turn in his political rhetoric and demeanor.
For more than an hour before a group of activists gathered in a farmhouse owned by House Democratic leader Peter Burling, and then for nearly two hours more before an overflow crowd of students at nearby Dartmouth College, Kerry espoused his political priorities and criticism of President Bush in the bluntest of terms.
For example, the senator also was unsparing as he chronicled the administration's dealings with Iraq and North Korea: ''I've never seen sort of such clumsy ineptness in the conduct of foreign affairs.''
A person in the audience yelled out, ''Tell us what you really think,'' triggering laughter, but also highlighting that even a crowd that included many first-time observers was struck by his unvarnished language.
At another turn, he took a jab at his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, a group that includes Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, only four years into his first term of elective office, and former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who until he began his candidacy was largely unknown on the national political scene.
''The agenda is enormous and this is not a time for neophytes,'' Kerry said. He said the country needs people ''who have been involved in the crosscurrents of our time.''
Quite often, candidates who utter, `When I'm president of the United States ...' get no closer to the Oval Office than their dreams.
In Kerry's case, the challenge is stiff. He will face more than a half-dozen rivals for the Democratic nomination. He must connect with voters in a uniquely personal way, despite a lifetime of criticism that he is socially awkward and aloof.
Then he must unseat a president who, less than two years from Election Day, has an approval rating in excess of 60 percent, and who is surrounded by one of the most aggressive political staffs ever to occupy the West Wing.
Underneath each challenge is Kerry's penchant for parsing and delineation, which has frequently left both opponents and supporters unsure of whether he is with them or against them.
At Dartmouth, the senator drifted when asked whether he supported gay marriage. His voice dropping, he appeared to be walking along a sharp rhetorical cliff before he said he backed civil unions between gays and lesbians, but not formal marriage between them. ''Why not?'' came the question, which Kerry ultimately answered by saying that his Catholicism has taught him that marriage is the union between a man and a woman.
Over the weekend, though, Kerry's remarks also indicated the depth to which he has considered his candidacy and prepared himself for the inevitable criticism.
When a New Hampshire reporter asked him about the $14.6 billion price tag for Boston's Central Artery project, Kerry cut him off in midsentence to begin explaining how he helped negotiate a cap in the federal contribution to the project, which has has been troubled by skyrocketing costs. Then Kerry compared it to the $8 billion cost of the Everglades restoration project in Florida, a state run by Governor Jeb Bush, the president's brother.
When a student asked whether a politician from Massachusetts, often labeled a liberal state, can be elected president, Kerry said ''the shoe doesn't fit'' in his case. He then pointed out that he served in the military, in wartime, that he was a prosecutor who, he said, delivered justice within 90 days from arrest to conviction, that he generally supported free trade and welfare reform, that he was himself a gun owner, and that his presidential campaign had already won the support of the minority leaders in the House and Senate in South Carolina, a state known for its conservatism.
Invoking Daniel Webster of Massachusetts on the Senate floor in March 1850 about the Missouri Compromise, Kerry said, ''`I come to the floor today not as a Massachusetts man but as an American. ' And I'm running for the presidency of the United States on the issues of America and as an American.''
Watching Kerry over the weekend, it was hard not to feel that he senses this is his shot, his one chance to win the office to which he has long aspired. The urgency of his rhetoric hints that he believes this is his moment. By 2008, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to be a Democratic presidential candidate, while an open seat would inspire an array of Republican challengers.
It would take a protracted military challenge to keep the nation's current focus on foreign and security affairs, both specialties of Kerry.
In a conversation Saturday, after he finished a charity ski race in Waterville Valley, N.H., the senator conceded the change in tone with the same directness that had been the hallmark of his weekend.
''I'm running,'' Kerry said. ''I'm now a candidate. I'm going to draw the distinctions and make the case to the American people.''
Pausing to collect his thoughts, he added: ''I feel liberated by the fact of my candidacy. I'm now defining what I think the agenda should be, not what the Senate should do, not what the Congress should do. I will rise or I will fall on that.''
Glen Johnson can be reached at johnson@globe.com.
This story ran on page A3 of the Boston Globe on 1/13/2003.
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