THE VETS ATTACK

But then he spoke. "It's gut-check time, folks," he said. "This is not about whether it's politically expedient. This is a f---ing war. Kids are dying out there, and this president continues not to tell the truth. You'd have to be out of your mind to go in there the way he did. There was no WMD, no imminent threat, no ties to Al Qaeda. The answer is no. Anything else is crap."

Kerry had decided to be the antiwar candidate. Not for the first time, to be sure. He had called himself an antiwar candidate when he was trying to peel off the Dean vote in January. But he spoke without any equivocation this time. The next day he gave a blistering speech at NYU, attacking Bush for the folly of invading Iraq. The Bush campaign had some fun with an ad showing Kerry tacking back and forth on his windsurfer. But to campaign staffers desperate for some sign that Kerry was turning a corner--that the famous fourth-quarter player had finally taken the field--he sounded convincing.

For months Kerry had been the oldest political person on his campaign plane by about 20 years. He may have liked to be a loner, playing his guitar and watching old movies, but he needed a grown-up to advise him and deliver bad news if necessary. John Sasso had been Kerry's original choice as campaign manager in 2002. A much-sought-after consultant to private businesses, Sasso had been unwilling to drop all his clients and join the campaign. After Kerry locked up the nomination in February, Sasso took a job at the Democratic National Committee running the party's get-out-the-vote operation, which allowed him to play part-time adviser to the Kerry campaign. An old Boston hand, Sasso was a gut player. He didn't always win (he had been brought in, too late, to try to salvage the sinking Dukakis campaign in 1988), but he had good instincts and wasn't intimidated by Kerry's intellectualism. In September, Sasso started traveling with Kerry. When the nominee began to complain that he was losing his voice only a week before the first debate, Sasso saw an opening. He took away Kerry's cell phone. "You need to rest your voice, Senator. I'll tell you if there are any messages you need to know about." Kerry grumbled, but he went along.

The other new player on the plane was Mike McCurry. One of the best-liked White House press secretaries, McCurry had weathered the Lewinsky scandal and the chaos of the Clinton years with a wry smile and a deft touch with reporters. His relaxed demeanor starkly contrasted with Stephanie Cutter's hard edge. Kerry had tried to hire McCurry back in the spring of 2004, but he, too, had been unwilling to give up all his private clients, and campaign manager Cahill (possibly sensing a rival) had insisted on all or nothing. Now everyone agreed that McCurry's soothing presence was critical. Typically, McCurry joked that he had given up an easy and well-paid life to go to work for his former subordinate--Joe Lockhart, who had been his deputy at the White House before succeeding him.

With the new team onboard, the campaign actually began to win a few rounds of the battle for cable-news supremacy, the daily struggle over who can control the 24/7 airwaves of CNN, Fox and MSNBC. But, somewhat disturbingly, the candidate would improve--then regress. He was sharp and tough in his prepared speeches on the war. But at a town meeting in the Wisconsin hamlet of Spring Green in late September, the old Kerry was on full display. He rambled about, wreathed in nuance, as he puzzled then lost his audience. Seeking to be all things to all people, he tried to be empathetic about rising college tuition. He earnestly told the crowd that he knew how hard it was to find the right financial options because he had two children and three stepchildren. His audience, mostly farmers and laborers and small businessmen, audibly laughed at him. Kerry was married to a billionaire, right? What did he know about making ends meet?

The town meeting was Kerry's only public appearance that week. The campaign was preparing for the first of three presidential debates. It was obvious that Kerry could not afford to lose any of them, and certainly not the first. For several weeks Kerry had been demanding more debate-prep time. He would take practice questions, sometimes for hours, and then go off and write. This exercise was, generally speaking, beneficial. Kerry usually stuck to the script when he wrote it himself. But he deviated and wandered when he was using someone else's words. Still, his aides worried when the candidate disappeared to his room for the night. Was he living in some kind of bubble, a fantasy land? Would he ignore the professional advice of his handlers? Kerry was alone, again.