FITS AND STARTS

By then Trippi's loyalty really lay less with Dean than with the cybermovement he had built. Dean was irritated by Trippi's celebrity (the campaign manager was often wired for a CNN documentary and had to be reminded to turn off the mike when he went to the bathroom). By early January, Trippi was in a deep gloom, and so were his closest campaign associates. One senior aide compared the Dean campaign to the novel "Flowers for Algernon," the story of a seriously retarded man who, put through a course of radically experimental treatment, lives for a few months as a genius--then regresses rapidly to what he had been before the experts remade him: a moron.

Trippi was planning on retiring to his farm in Maryland after the New Hampshire primary. Still, he wanted to take one last shot, to "bet it all" on Iowa and New Hampshire, knowing that in a protracted fight Dean's candor would kill him. "It's probably a f---ing miracle we're even sitting where we're at," he said, utterly despondent. He fell silent for a while. "The guy," Trippi said suddenly, referring to Dean, "is not ready for prime time. I mean, he's just f---ing not ready for prime time, and he never will be." There were 11 days left before the Iowa caucuses.

Dean's plan in Iowa was to flood the state with an army of volunteers, in jaunty orange caps, to knock on doors and personally escort voters to the polls. Kerry's Iowa organizer, Michael Whouley, was appropriately skeptical of the Dean approach in small rural towns where out-of-state college kids were regarded as aliens. A legendary political figure who avoided most reporters (thus enhancing the legend), Whouley was patient and quiet, but he had an aura of confidence. On the Friday night before Christmas he gathered 80 field staffers in a Unitarian church in downtown Des Moines and told them, "It's never a guy with the early momentum. It's the guy with the late momentum, and that's us."

As he crisscrossed Iowa, Kerry was a much more engaged and relaxed campaigner. He seemed bemused and affectionate with Teresa, not quite so nervous about her mood. "C'mon, General, let's go," he said, patting her on the back and marching her onstage at a campaign event in Iowa in early January. He told the women in the room that he wouldn't see his wife again until after the caucuses; the ladies made an "awww" sound. Teresa smirked and made a "no big deal" gesture.

The traveling press continued to have doubts about Teresa. After one particularly disjointed speech at the Hotel Fort Des Moines in early January, press aide David Wade paced nervously while reporters snickered that the candidate's wife was on medication. But the press was warming to Kerry. He had begun traveling with an old friend from his antiwar days, Peter Yarrow of the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary. Kerry had played bass in his prep-school rock-and-roll band, and to relax he liked to strum a guitar and sing along with Yarrow. The old folkie seemed to make Kerry nostalgic and remember his roots as an authentic movement figure. (When Yarrow played "Puff the Magic Dragon," a CBS camera caught Kerry playfully miming that he was toking on a joint.) On one frozen night, heading down desolate Route 63, an exhausted Kerry and his staff and the traveling press passed out cold Budweisers and chocolate cake. "Pedro," Kerry said, "get your guitar." Late into the songs, Yarrow played "Carry On My Sweet Survivor":

Carry on my sweet survivor
Carry on my lonely friend
Don't give up the dream and
Don't you let it end