TRENCH WARFARE

The Kerry campaign was well aware of the importance of maintaining momentum, of not easing off after the primaries and allowing the Bush campaign to dominate. In 2000, the Gore campaign had been listless all spring while George W. Bush was convincing voters that he was really a "compassionate conservative." At least money would not be a problem this time around. Kerry had only about $2 million in cash on March 1 (versus more than $100 million in the Bush coffers), but raising money was proving to be easy, thanks partly to the intensity of anti-Bush feeling. By forcing Kerry to "bust the caps" and go outside the campaign-finance system, Howard Dean had done the Democrats a great favor. Al Gore had spent only about $9 million during the 2000 phony war; Kerry planned to spend more like $80 million. Kerry had genuine momentum coming out of the primaries. This was the time to capitalize on it and fix in the voters' minds the image of the Democratic candidate as a thoughtful war hero, a man who didn't just shoot from the hip but was strong enough to come from behind.

On March 8 top aides gathered for a strategy session in Bob Shrum's well-appointed, airy office overlooking the Potomac. Tad Devine, Shrum's partner and a key strategist, stressed, "We can't let down and relax." It was important, he said, for Kerry to recover from his chronic cold, but after a little rest he needed to be out on the trail. Devine called the period between the primaries and the convention "the interregnum," and proposed what he called an "ideas primary." Kerry would offer his solutions to the pressing problems of the day: getting the economy going again and restoring international faith in American foreign policy.

Kerry was soon out speaking about jobs and education, the environment and mending relations with the allies, but he wasn't connecting. Part of his problem was Iraq, which was veering out of control, with uprisings and bombings and kidnappings. Kerry was curiously mute on the crisis. He could urge greater international involvement, but with Iraq still in chaos, why would foreign countries send people who might just be taken hostage? So Kerry mostly talked about doing the responsible thing and staying the course, which was about what Bush was already doing.

The real problem was not the subject but the speaker. Kerry's friend Sen. Joe Biden, ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, was far more animated on the Sunday talk shows, comparing the Iraqi uprisings that spring to the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in 1968. There was something soporific about Kerry's style that made his speeches, no matter how considered and reasonable, seem forgettable.

Not surprisingly, the press seemed to pay more attention to Kerry's occasional testy outbursts. At the end of March he went skiing, an essential outlet for a man who uses vigorous, high-stress sports as a release. "Unbelievable--I didn't think about the campaign the whole time I was up there," he exulted after one particularly grueling day in the northern Rockies of Sun Valley, Idaho, where Teresa kept one of her five houses. Kerry was happy to be slogging up mountains and snowboarding down icy chutes, but he collided with a clumsy Secret Service man and told him off in crude language. A couple of reporters, from ABC and The Boston Globe, were skiing nearby and publicized the incident. Then on "Good Morning America" in early April, the candidate bridled when the normally genial host Charlie Gibson asked him about an old controversy, recently brought back to life by Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush surrogates, over whether Kerry had thrown away his medals (or just his ribbons) at an antiwar protest in 1971. Kerry was indignant about having his honor questioned, and at the end of the interview, with the camera still rolling, he snapped at Gibson, "Thanks for doing the work of the RNC [the Republican National Committee]."

Offstage, Kerry's handlers cringed. Putting him on first thing in the morning on an issue he cared about viscerally was a mistake, they realized. Kerry cannot deflect a question when he is wrapped up in the sureness of his position. (John Edwards, on the other hand, was able to deftly redirect the question back to Cheney's draft status during the Vietnam War. Questioned about Kerry's medals by talk-show host Don Imus, Edwards shot back with a laugh, "Five deferrals, and you're asking me about John Kerry?")