FITS AND STARTS

"Was the struggle worth the cost?" Yarrow asked Kerry. "Yes, Peter, it was," said Kerry softly. Even the most jaded reporters sat quietly for a moment.

Despite Kerry's uneasiness over playing up his war exploits, the campaign had been airing an ad showing one of his old Swift Boat crewmen, Dale Sandusky, saying that Kerry's boldness and decisiveness had "saved our lives" in Vietnam. Here was the way to get around Kerry's reticence: have his crewmates speak for him. The ad was a success. Iowa voters who had seen the ad favored Kerry by almost 20 points.

The best testimonial came by pure luck. In Oregon in early January, a retired policeman named Jim Rassmann was in a bookstore and noticed a book about Kerry's Vietnam experience by historian Douglas Brinkley, "Tour of Duty." Rassmann had been a Special Forces soldier who had fallen off Kerry's boat during a fire fight in the delta. Kerry had swung his boat around and come back to rescue Rassmann. His arm injured, Kerry himself had pulled Rassmann out of the water. Rassmann thumbed through the index of "Tour of Duty" and saw his story. On a whim, he called the Kerry campaign and said he'd like to help. The receptionist, Jackie Williams, had the presence to get hold of the campaign's veterans coordinator. Rassmann was in Iowa the next day, flown there by the campaign. (Briefing Rassmann, a Kerry aide asked if he'd ever been in front of cameras. "Yes, usually after somebody's been killed," the ex-cop drolly replied. He had worked as a homicide investigator.)

Kerry was genuinely surprised to encounter Rassmann, whom he had not seen since 1969. Their reunion, a warm hug, was on television all over the state. The caucuses were only two days away.

On caucus night, as they were riding in a darkened bus in Des Moines, a Fox News producer handed Shrum the entrance polls. Kerry 29, Edwards 21, Dean 20, Gephardt 15. Shrum later recalled that he felt like crying. He showed the numbers to Kerry, who extended a wordless high-five.

The race was, for all practical purposes, over. The Dean scream, uttered a few hours later as Dean tried to rally his crestfallen troops, was mostly theater; the damage had been done. Dean had finished with 18 percent of the vote at the Iowa caucuses. The press, and most Democrats, wrote him off. Edwards would make a good showing in the primaries ahead, but he didn't have the money or the presidential gravitas to overtake Kerry.