The Moment of a Lifetime for Kerry

[papau]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/29/politics/campaign/29man.html

The Moment of a Lifetime for Kerry
By TODD S. PURDUM and DAVID M. HALBFINGER

OSTON, July 28 - <snip>

When he finally arrived in Washington in 1985, he made some enemies with his unshrinking investigations into foreign policy controversies, and he has perpetually suffered by comparison with his Massachusetts Senate colleague, Edward M. Kennedy, an acknowledged legislative master. Mr. Kerry's ambitions were always obvious, but he deferred what once seemed his destiny so long that he became the last member of his Senate class to seek the presidency. He began the current campaign as the presumed front-runner, only to stumble in the face of Howard Dean's sudden rise and then come roaring back with his victory in the Iowa caucuses.<snip>

He made an early splash - and engendered much resentment - in Washington with inquiries into the contras in Nicaragua, the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and electoral corruption in the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos. He was again marked as a show horse - Boston reporters nicknamed him Live Shot for his eagerness to appear on television - and struggled for acceptance in a world of ward politics whose past masters had not gone to Yale. The annual St. Patrick's Day breakfasts in South Boston proved a particular trial.<snip>

"He hasn't flip-flopped on his thinking at all," said Mr. Kerry's older sister, Peggy. "Newt Gingrich was on one of those TV shows the other day, and he was asked about Republicans' changing positions, and he said their positions had 'evolved.' I would use 'evolved' for John. You go into something, and the reality of it gives you a different image of it. "<snip>

But Mr. Kerry also is the singular blend of a flinty mother descended from two old Yankee families whose fortunes had dwindled, and a brooding father whose own father was an immigrant striver who had been born Jewish, converted to Catholicism and later committed suicide.

He endured a painful divorce from his first wife, Julia Thorne, who suffered from severe depression, and he spent years as a conscientious commuter-father of two young daughters, struggling to pay tuitions and sleeping in cut-rate quarters offered by supporters so he could make ends meet on a Senate salary.<snip>