FITS AND STARTS

That is, up to a point. Ruling-class sons were supposed to compete hard--but not sweat too much. To get (or stay) ahead--but do so gracefully, even effortlessly. To wear the mantle of wealth and power lightly, coolly. The style had been set by an earlier generation of swells who had fashioned certain unwritten, strict yet ambiguous rules of decorum. It was all very complicated, a tricky, delicate business of flaunting it, but subtly, and John Forbes Kerry, at least in the critical eyes of his classmates, never seemed to get the balance right. While other preppies had been perfecting their slouches on the greenswards of country clubs, Kerry had been grimly learning a more Puritan code, like how to navigate a small boat in the fog off the New England coast, doggedly trying to please his dour and secretive father. His mother sweetly preached the duty to serve and the old-time virtue of choosing the harder right over the easier wrong. (Her last words to her son, says Kerry, were "Integrity, integrity, integrity.") Their son was a good boy at school, a striver and serious, delivering a speech on "The Plight of the Negro" and founding a debating society. But he was too earnest, too obvious for the cutups, who mocked the faint air of superiority that Kerry wore, mostly as a defense.

Kerry's revenge was to do better, to excel, to leave his detractors behind--but not to boast! Never to gloat! Unless, of course, boasting was absolutely necessary to get ahead. There was something a little desperate, but admirable, about Kerry's determination. He would do what it took to get where he wanted to go.

In New Hampshire that day after Labor Day 2003, he got on the bus.

Kerry had been assured that the nomination was his, almost, as it were, by right. A memo drafted by his campaign manager, Jim Jordan, in November 2002 assured him that he would be "the first one out of the box" in the upcoming campaign and that he would raise the most money "because you're the best candidate." He would establish himself as front runner, soak up endorsements and contributions and march inexorably to the nomination.

It was all myth. Former Vermont governor Howard Dean, blunt and down to earth (especially in comparison with the lordly Kerry), had burst from the pack with a grass-roots Internet-fueled campaign and huge outdoor rallies on his Sleepless Summer tour in August. The establishment press swooned over the anti-establishment candidate. Kerry was deemed a hopeless stiff, his campaign written off as moribund.

Kerry was nonplused by it all, a little hurt that Dean had run as the "movement" candidate against Kerry, the tool of the Washington status quo. Kerry had been in the Senate for 20 years, but he still saw himself as the reform-minded antiwar protester who had come from Vietnam, tossed away his ribbons and defied the Nixon administration. (Dean had fun with Kerry's self-righteousness; at his private debate prep, he would pose as Kerry, sticking his nose up in the air and mimicking Kerry: "I was in Vietnam; I don't take any PAC money.")