Inside The Mind Of John Kerry

Monday, Aug. 02, 2004 By JOE KLEIN
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John Kerry is trying to be helpful, but it just isn't working. The topic is tough decisions he has made, specifically the grueling series of choices forced upon him last autumn, when his campaign was sinking fast. Kerry is sitting in a blue leather swivel chair in the front cabin of his spiffy new campaign plane. He is wearing a blinding white shirt and a soft pink tie, and he leans forward intently, elbows on knees. But he doesn't really want to talk about this. "It's just a process," he says, at one point, of his decision-making style. In this case, a humbling process. He was forced to fire his campaign manager, Jim Jordan. He was forced to abandon his campaign in New Hampshire, where Howard Dean was clobbering him in the polls, and concentrate his assets on the uninviting cornfields of Iowa. And, speaking of assets, he was forced to go into hock, despite his wife's millions, and mortgage his primary possession--his Boston town house--in order to pay for the campaign. "I knew

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I was caught up in a dynamic that wasn't working," he says halfheartedly. "It was a big roll of the dice," he says perfunctorily.

Kerry has changed in recent months. He has become more presidential, if such a thing is possible for a fellow who has seemed prematurely presidential ever since prep school. But the portentous nature of the prize--he will accept the nomination of the Democratic Party this week--has enveloped him like a shroud. He is more cautious than in past conversations, less willing to play with ideas. Or maybe this is just his famous homestretch focus kicking in. My questions are a distraction. His mind is on the big speech. He doesn't want to think about painful times. I try a different tack and ask, "What was the most difficult decision you've ever made?"

"The most difficult decision?" He emits a slightly frustrated snort and slowly sets the gears in motion. To enlist in the Navy? No, Vietnam was just a distant cloud on his horizon when he did that. To oppose the war when he came home? No, he had seen too much. Two weeks after he left Vietnam, his close friend Don (Dinky) Droz was killed--Kerry still has a photo in his Senate office of the tangled mess of Droz's exploded swift boat--and Kerry felt compelled to speak out. "There have been so many tough decisions." He sighed, then conceded, "But I guess they were really piling up on top of each other last fall."