Frank Luntz, a GOP pollster, conducted focus groups for MSNBC among primary voters in a half-dozen states. The respondents described Kerry as "distant," "sad," "tired." He doesn't smile enough, they said. He doesn't laugh enough.
Kerry can laugh at himself, friends say. He can be wry, ironic, with a sense of the absurd. "He has a whimsical smile sometimes," says Simpson. "You can tell when he's amused."
After he underwent surgery on his prostate last year, Kerry told reporters that doctors had removed his "aloof gland."
One former Republican senator describes Kerry as a "very diligent, very talented and very smart fellow," who is nonetheless "not always smart about how he is coming off to people."
The senator -- who asked not to be identified for fear of angering Kerry, whom he says he likes -- says that after a while, people learn to "not take Kerry's aloofness personally."
The Private Kerry
Early in February, Kerry interrupted his primary campaign sprint to attend a memorial service for Jayona Beal, a longtime clerical worker in his Senate office, who had died suddenly a few days before. Beal was an unassuming and beloved fixture in the office. She baked cookies on staffers' birthdays and took special care of the interns.
The memorial service drew about 75 people to the Russell Building Caucus Room. Kerry walked in to the surprise of many. He delivered a eulogy emphasizing Beal's "service to the country" and at one point began crying.
After he composed himself and finished his speech, Kerry spent several minutes with Beal's family before returning to the campaign trail.
These are the kinds of Kerry stories that play against type -- and that aren't widely known. "You just have to know Kerry" is a refrain common among his admirers. He is a robust and avid conversationalist with eclectic interests. He can recite every word of Rudyard Kipling's "Gunga Din," learned to speak Vietnamese before the war and plays ice hockey. "The more you know him, the more you see how wonderfully warm he is," says Daschle.
In October 2002, the morning after Republican Sen. Trent Lott was booed in Minneapolis during a memorial service for Sen. Paul Wellstone, who had been killed in a plane crash, Kerry was the first Democrat to call Lott and apologize. (A few weeks later, Kerry was among the first to publicly call for the Mississippi Republican to resign as majority leader after he made a statement endorsing the 1948 presidential campaign of segregationist Strom Thurmond.)
The people who know Kerry best tend to admire him most. His daughters speak of him with an affection that exceeds the predictable emotion one would expect from a candidate's children.
In his early years in the Senate, as his first marriage was ending, Kerry returned to Boston every weekend -- and on some weekdays -- to see his school-age girls. He spent many late nights on the phone, helping them with homework. Kerry's first wife, Julia Thorne, still speaks fondly of him. Her twin brother, David Thorne, remains one of his closest friends. Kerry has a legion of admirers who swear by his courage, decency and, yes, affability. This includes a cohort of veterans with whom he served in Vietnam, many of whom have traveled the country to campaign for him.
Del Sandusky, of Elgin, Ill., who served with Kerry in Vietnam, tells of the lengths Kerry went to help him endure the trauma of his postwar life and his descent into alcoholism and depression. "He would call me at all hours, make his staff available," says Sandusky. "I would do anything for him."
True to Himself
Bill Weld recalls how his former adversary called him as he drove to his wedding on Long Island last year.
"He told me to break a leg," says Weld, a moderate Republican whose appointment (by President Clinton) to be ambassador to Mexico was blocked by Sen. Jesse Helms. Weld is now an investment banker in New York and ran into Kerry recently. "He said, 'Stick with me, Weld, I'll get you to Mexico.' "
Like John Edwards this year, Weld was considered a far more " likable" candidate than Kerry. And -- like Edwards -- Weld was defeated. "Maybe it's good to be a backslapper superficially," Weld says. But ultimately, he says, presidential elections come down to how voters judge a candidate's gravitas, experience and ideas.
"Likability" could also matter less than it did in 2000, a campaign that was waged amid relative peace and prosperity. "The more important the issues are, the more people are likely to ignore the trivial issues," says Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who has known Kerry for decades. "Jobs and terrorism makes this stuff even more superficial."
Yet superficial factors inform big decisions. And all things being equal, voters would rather like the person they're stuck with for four years. Kerry-watchers say the best thing he has going for him is that, generally, he doesn't try to be someone he's not. "I always joke with him," says Bob Kerrey. "I say, 'John, when you get west of the Mississippi, lose those Hermes ties you wear.' "
But Kerry doesn't, and maybe that's an asset. One of the things that hurt Gore, some Democrats believe, is that he kept trying on different personas: the populist Gore, Farmer Gore, Statesman Gore.
Kerry, if not quite a magnetic presence, knows who he is, friends say. Age, experience and the successes of his primary campaign have given him a greater ease than he's had in the past.
"In fairness, I think Kerry has learned a lot over the years and is comfortable in his skin," Ron Kaufman says. "Maybe his skin is just tighter than anyone else's."
