Inside The Mind Of John Kerry

(7 of 9)

It certainly seemed that way at the time, but the vote on the $87 billion marked the end of Kerry's AWOL period. Within two weeks, a mild-mannered warrior emerged from the phone booth. While Kerry was preoccupied with the war, all sorts of problems, great and small, were festering within the campaign. Some arguments had been festering, unresolved, for months. The biggest problem was Jordan, who had a positive genius for alienating Kerry's closest associates, including wife Teresa and brother Cam. Managing the various layers of consultants, personal friends, political cronies and Vietnam buddies that formed the Kerry safari was never going to be easy, but Jordan ignored Kerry's old Boston pals and dismissed their concerns about the Dean campaign. "There isn't a single f______ vote to be had on the Internet," Jordan said at one point, according to several Kerry friends and staff members. "We don't need the f______ grass roots. We've got the grass tops," he said at another. "Shouldn't there be a statute of limitations on this stuff?" asks Jordan, who denies making those statements. "Clearly, Dean's success was causing a huge institutional frustration within the campaign."

It is impossible to know the specific moment that Kerry's fugue state lifted, but he was clearly in combat-survival mode by the second week in November. He consulted Ted Kennedy, who suggested his own chief of staff, Mary Beth Cahill, to replace Jordan. On Nov. 7, Kerry called Cahill and offered her the job without an interview. On Nov. 9, he sacked Jordan. It was as if a dam had burst. Within a week, Kerry began planning to abandon New Hampshire and transfer 100 staff members to Iowa. He demanded that the reluctant Michael Whouley, a genius organizer, take over the Iowa field operation. He decided to opt out of the federal campaign-finance system, which limits the amount that can be spent in each primary state, even though he had always been a supporter of public financing. Dean, flush with cash, was going to spend as much as he could in Iowa. Kerry, broke, needed to compete. He overhauled his stump speech and, in doing so, resolved an endless staff argument about how to deal with Dean. "Bob Shrum was on one side," says Cherny, referring to the famous, infamous political consultant, "and all the rest of us were on the other. And Shrum was right. He said that if you attack Dean in a multicandidate field, 'you wind up with John Edwards as the nominee.'"

But Shrum had also opposed a Cherny attempt to slip an attack on Bush--for the President's puerile "Bring 'em on" challenge to the Iraqi insurgents--into Kerry's September announcement speech. Now the candidate decided to bring it back as part of a lacerating attack on the President, and it became the Kerry campaign's signature. He launched the new speech at the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson dinner on Nov. 15, which marked the rebirth of his campaign. "Suddenly, the decision-making process was incredibly crisp," says a staff member. "It was like dealing with a different guy."