Inside The War Rooms

WINGMAN: Senator John McCain with the Bush family

BROOKS KRAFT / CORBIS FOR TIME

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Kerry: Waiting Too Long To Return Fire
For all the campaign's worry about how it would survive Bush's August blitz without money of its own to fight back, the strategists had failed to see the sniper that was waiting in the weeds. Just a week after a Democratic Convention that had been a four-day-long infomercial about Kerry's Vietnam record, a group styling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was suddenly dominating the cable airwaves with accusations that Kerry had faked his injuries and lied about his heroism in Vietnam to collect a chestful of medals that he didn't deserve. Kerry's initial strategy was to do ... nothing.

His handlers, led by pollster Mark Mellman and consultant Bob Shrum, had convinced themselves it was unwise to respond to the Swifties' ads, which were running in only three states and were funded by a longtime Bush donor, because a rebuttal would serve to amplify the phony charges. And the advisers were determined to stay upbeat, in keeping with the holy writ of the focus groups that kept saying how distasteful they found negative campaigning. So when a jolt finally forced Kerry to face reality, it didn't come from any of his high-priced consultants and pollsters. The truth was delivered by men Kerry didn't even know, folks who have better training than any political operative in spotting and surviving an ambush. It came from the vets.

A life member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Kerry reminded the crowd at its national convention in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Aug. 18 that he was "a combat veteran who has walked in your shoes." Kerry's reception was no better than lukewarm—a sharp contrast to the enthusiasm that had greeted Bush there only two days before. During the 35 minutes Kerry spoke of keeping faith with all the experiences and values that combat veterans shared—mentioning his military service no fewer than two dozen times—two members of the graying Massachusetts delegation stood at attention, with their backs to him. Somewhere in the room, someone shouted, "Liar!" And it was hard not to notice that there were plenty of empty seats up front.

But then, at the end, something unexpected happened. Dozens of vets made their way to the rope line to shake Kerry's hand and deliver a message. "What are you waiting for? You gotta fight back!" Again and again they told him the same thing. He had to say something, take the fight to Bush, stop coasting. You are losing this thing, they said.

By the time he reached his Boston town house at 10 that night, Kerry was livid. He gathered Cahill, communications director Stephanie Cutter, press secretary David Wade and traveling chief of staff David Morehouse in the messy fourth-floor office where he keeps his most precious Vietnam mementos, including a picture of his friend Dick Pershing, from whom he had been inseparable in prep school and college and who had been killed in a rice paddy by a Vietcong grenade. "Every time they attack what I did on those rivers, they attack people who are not alive to defend themselves," Kerry thundered. "This is an outrage. I'm not going to sit and take this anymore." When the rest of the team in Washington joined the conversation by speakerphone, Kerry learned that it wasn't just a principle at issue: the campaign's polling numbers were showing an alarming slide.

The campaign quickly changed gears. Kerry and his aides set to work furiously, turning what was supposed to be a speech the next day on homeland security into a good old-fashioned counterpunch. "Thirty years ago, official Navy reports ... documented my service in Vietnam and awarded me the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. Thirty years ago, this was the plain truth. It still is, and I still carry the shrapnel in my leg," he would declare. "I'm not going to let anyone question my commitment to defending America—then, now or ever." After drafting the speech and sending Kerry off to bed shortly before midnight, Cutter, Morehouse and Wade reconvened at Figs, an Italian place on Beacon Hill, to soak their remorse in beer and put the other pieces in place: the logistics for the speech site, the final tweaks to the speech, an alert to the press that there would be big news the next day. Kerry was fighting back. The question was whether he had already lost too much blood to survive.