Kerry Spot    [ jim geraghty reporting ]
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Highlights from a big article in this week's Newsweek, catching up with former Democratic nominee John Kerry:

Kerry has not given any formal interviews since his defeat. But on Nov. 11, nine days after the election, Kerry summoned a NEWSWEEK reporter to his house on Boston's fashionable Louisberg Square. He wanted to complain about NEWSWEEK's election issue, which he said was unduly harsh and gossipy about him, his staff and his wife. (The 45,000-word article, the product of a yearlong reporting project, is being published next week as a book, "Election 2004," by PublicAffairs.)

Despite, or because of, a somewhat stoical and severe New England upbringing, Kerry has a tendency to natter at his subordinates, to blame everyone but himself. ("Did he whine?" was the first question one senior Kerry aide asked of the NEWSWEEK reporter who had recently been to see Kerry.) On this damp November evening, he appeared alone in the house; he answered the door and showed his visitor into a cozy, book-lined drawing room. His face was deeply lined, his eyes drooped, he looked like he hadn't slept in about two years. But his manner was resolute, his mood seemed calm, even chipper.

He never quite came out and said it, but Kerry sounded very much like a man who was running for president again...

In conversation with NEWSWEEK, Kerry seemed particularly interested in trying to find a way to speak to ordinary voters that didn't sound too grandiose or "political." Though Kerry did not directly criticize his friend Shrum, it's clear he did not feel well served by his message makers and speechwriters.

The deeper problem may be Kerry's personality, which may be too distant or reserved to win mass affection. As this reporter left his house in November, Kerry called out and followed him down the street. He wanted to show a letter from a schoolgirl that had been left on his stoop. The letter read, in part, "John Kerry, you're the greatest!" Kerry looked into the reporter's eye. "The pundits have never liked me," he said. "Is it the way I look? The way I sound?" He seemed vulnerable for a moment, then caught himself, smiled and walked home to his empty house.

Something about this article comes across as a bit mean. Maybe it's that I don't care to know how Kerry is coping emotionally with the rejection, or that I need to hear another round of anonymous quotes from his aides pointing fingers and listing his faults as a candidate.

Maybe it's getting tiresome to have heard folks talk about how great a candidate Kerry was for nine months, and then suddenly hear every Democrat lament that he was a terrible campaigner after Nov. 2. What, they only figured this out on Election Day?

[Posted 01/03 08:02 AM]