Kerry Dots Deliberation With Decision

"In my mind," said Nancy Stetson, Kerry's senior foreign policy adviser in the Senate, "what clinched the decision was the fact that the international community couldn't prove that Saddam [Hussein] didn't have a WMD program."

On the night before his floor statement, Kerry exercised his final decision-making tool -- he wrote it all down. He developed the practice in boarding school. Living far from his parents from age 11, Kerry often wrote journal entries and letters to figure out his positions. At 11:30 the night before the vote, Stetson found Kerry at his desk, his reading glasses perched on his nose, rewriting his speech.

"Listen to this, to my beginning," Kerry said to her. "How do you like this?"

A month later, at a family Thanksgiving gathering, Kerry defended that speech. But by Thanksgiving 2003, as Vermont governor Howard Dean, who was antiwar, surged ahead, and as journalists grilled him, Kerry was visibly tired of defending his decision.

"He was wistful and angry about it. He felt misinformed by Bush," said Kerry's friend George Butler, who was riding with him on the campaign bus. "He shook his head and said, 'One vote, George. One vote.' "

At campaign stops, voters expressed confusion: Kerry had voted for the resolution, but then criticized the prewar diplomacy. Was he for the war or against it? It gave his opponents an opening. Last month, a Democratic rival, retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, slammed Kerry: "The American people . . . don't want a follower who makes decisions by licking his finger and sticking it up in the wind."

Republicans also have seized on it. Kerry's Iraq vote, said Christine Iverson of the Republican National Committee, was just one in a string of reversals. Iverson said that Kerry voted for the USA Patriot Act, but now says it is an assault on civil liberties; voted against the Persian Gulf War, but later said he supported it; voted against the $87 billion for troop support and Iraqi reconstruction, while maintaining that he supports the troops and Iraqi reconstruction; and voted for the No Child Left Behind Act, which he now criticizes.

"John Kerry's decisions are guided by political expedience rather than a core set of values," she said.

Kerry's voice dropped an octave when queried about this critique. "They want it to look like a reversal, but the fact is they went back on their word," he said. "I've been completely consistent." When he voted for the resolution, aides said, he expected that the president would not "rush to war."

Ron Rosenblith, a former Kerry aide, said that the Iraq vote was just one unsatisfying choice Kerry has faced in the Senate.

"He'll call and say, 'Here's another 'but' vote for you,' " said Rosenblith. "Either way you vote, it doesn't work. You vote yes, and say 'but.' Or no and say 'but.' He calls Iraq a 'but' vote."

Luck as the Crown

The biopsy results came on Christmas Eve 2002, confirming a suspicious blood test. Kerry had prostate cancer.

How should he treat it? Should he drop out of the presidential race?

The timing complicated Kerry's decision. His father had died two years earlier of the same disease. Kerry was in a critical phase of his campaign, courting fundraisers, hiring staff. Advisers had just coined his slogan -- "Better Choices" -- and now Kerry, unexpectedly, had to choose.