What's the difference between well liked and popular?
"Popular," Weicker says, "is a shade above well liked." Kennedy, he says, is popular.
Kerry likes to invoke the French writer Andre Gide: "Don't try to understand me too quickly." And the term "like" could easily replace "understand" in the assessments of Kerry's friends. It takes time and exposure to appreciate Kerry, says Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), a close friend -- the kind of time and exposure not easily afforded by the drive-by imagery of a campaign.
Kerry is a natural introvert, says Daschle. Introverts, he says, are surprisingly common in a political realm packed with elite social athletes. "One of the best-kept secrets of Washington is how many successful people are oftentimes shy," says Daschle, who places himself in this category.
Ted Kennedy reiterates this observation, which he says also applied to his brothers John and Robert. He guesses that Kerry's reserve stems from his experiences in Vietnam. There lingers in Kerry "a lot of deep angst in his soul from that conflict," Kennedy says, adding that Kerry is at his most relaxed and expansive when he's around Vietnam veterans. He is earthier, quicker to laugh, tell stories, indulge a goofier version of himself.
Kerry will often overcompensate for his shyness in political settings, friends say. He can give the impression that he's trying too hard -- excessively ending sentences with the name of the person he's talking to, for example. Even in casual conversation, Kerry elevates his voice as if giving a speech. He appears to be weaning himself of a longstanding -- and long remarked upon -- habit of peeking over the head of the person he's talking to, as if scanning the room.
People who have watched Kerry on the stump say his performance has improved. He is signing more autographs, working longer rope lines, keeping longer eye contact. "I watched him in Iowa, and it was like night and day between the fall and January," says Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who endorsed Howard Dean. Harkin half-jokes that if Kerry had been as good in November as he became in January, Harkin might have endorsed him instead. "John's not a slap-you-on-the-back, grab-a-beer kind of guy," Harkin says. "But what the heck."
Kerry will never be sheepish or unassuming like Ronald Reagan -- the kind of golly-gee presence that told voters he didn't need this job, even though he campaigned for it (three times in Reagan's case).
"People have a hard time knowing what to make of Kerry," says Ron Kaufman, a Republican lobbyist from Massachusetts and the brother-in-law of White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card. "If you ask 50 of the top Democrats in Massachusetts what they think of Kerry, they'll say they don't know the guy."
Kaufman says he has no great desire to "hang out with" Kerry. He says he wouldn't mind sitting down with him over lunch. But his hypothetical guest list would include a few others -- he mentions historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael Beschloss, and former senator and defense secretary William Cohen -- to discuss "some historical issue."
The Kerry campaign declined to make the candidate available for this article. Spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter provides recent press clippings in which voters speak positively about Kerry.
She provides a series of polls -- taken in individual states before their primaries and caucuses were held -- that show Kerry with higher "favorability" ratings than his Democratic opponents.
She provides an internal memo prepared by the campaign's pollster, the Mellman Group, that summarizes surveys taken in February. "Recent commentary has focused on the candidates' 'likeability' though often in ways unsupported by the facts," the memo says, referring to popularity rankings among presidential candidates in which Kerry fared best. "The data on this is unambiguous."
Cutter says, "John Kerry ran the most successful primary campaign in history, gaining the support of voters by traveling from town hall to town hall personally talking with and listening to them about their concerns and hopes for the nation. He connected with them, one by one, and won their votes."
