Did Candidate Kerry Get Better or Just Get Votes?

What a difference a month makes. On Jan. 9, Sen. John F. Kerry raced into Iowa for one last stand before that state’s crucial caucuses, stilted and stumbling and hoping for the best.

Since then he has lost his voice but gotten it back, lost two primaries but won a dozen others, improved on the stump then hit a plateau, stepped up his attacks on President Bush while still stepping on some of his own best lines.

In short, he is a candidate still under construction. But many Democrats are looking at him like a finished product -- one completed in record time.

As he has emerged as the clear favorite for his party’s presidential nomination, the question that looms is whether Kerry is actually better than before or whether his party simply yearns for him to be. The answer to both appears to be: “Yes.”

Nonpartisan political analyst Stuart Rothenberg, referring to Kerry’s struggles as a campaigner in 2003, said, “We had a year when he doesn’t connect with people on a personal level and now he’s connecting with everyone? I haven’t seen that much transformation.”

Rothenberg added: “He’s a better candidate, but his showing exaggerates his improvement.”

On the plus side, Kerry is a little warmer and projects more of President Clinton’s “I feel your pain” style when the venue allows it -- like at the town hall meetings in Iowa and New Hampshire, where he took innumerable questions. On the minus side, he doesn’t do many of those these days, because his campaign has shifted into big-rally mode. It’s all speeches all the time -- and the results have been mixed.

That hasn’t seemed to matter much to those voting in the Democratic primaries and caucuses. If they wanted eloquence, they’d have cast their ballots for John Edwards, the charismatic North Carolina senator who speaks movingly of “the two Americas,” divided by differences in wealth.

They’re voting for Kerry because they think he can beat President Bush. And they think he can beat Bush because he’s beaten every Democrat who’s come his way so far.

As Mary Kincaide, 55, said this week in Memphis, Tenn., explaining why she ignored Kerry a month ago but likes him now: “The wins helped, because there must be something going on that people like him.”

The reason isn’t his verbal grace, at least according to Herschel Freeman.

Kerry “takes the beginning of one sentence and the end of another and mixes them and matches them,” Freeman said after listening to the candidate Monday night in Memphis. “He’ll give a buildup and then give a closing remark that has nothing to do with the first sentence.”

It’s a little perplexing, the 57-year-old entertainment agent said, but the final result is good enough for him, because all those sentences “ended up being an attack on Bush.”

Freeman added: “I wish he was a better speaker, but he has fervor.”

Listen to Kerry in a high school gym near the Navy town of Norfolk, Va., where the decorated Vietnam veteran waxed nostalgic about the “silhouettes of those great naval ships” docked a stone’s throw away.

“This is a part of the country that’s close to my heart, because I’m a Navy man, through and through.”

The crowd cheered, the candidate continued. “But I want you to know that this is a community that knows something about aircraft carriers.”

The line worked better the way he phrased it in Iowa on Jan. 12, referring to Bush and his political advisors:

“Well, ladies and gentlemen, I know something about aircraft carriers -- for real. And if they want national security to be the key issue of this campaign, I’ve got three words that I know this president understands: Bring it on!”

And then there’s the sometimes loopy locution, which twists in direct relation to his fatigue. The bigger the bags under the senator’s eyes, the longer the sentences that spin from his lips.

Kerry riffs a lot on the concept of “Mission Accomplished” -- the sign on the carrier Abraham Lincoln when Bush flew in on a fighter jet May 1 and declared the war in Iraq a success. When Kerry’s hitting on all verbal cylinders, he says this:

“If you’re rich and privileged, George W. Bush can boast that he’s accomplished his mission on your behalf. But if you’re an average American grappling with the problems that beset us all, then George Bush has not accomplished his mission; in fact, he has not even tried.”

Campaigning in Virginia and Tennessee in recent days, Kerry often slogged through several long clauses before getting to the payoff. Here’s one example:

“But if you’re the real America, if you’re the America where people are working one, two, three jobs hoping to get ahead,” he began. “If you’re the America where seniors know that their retirement was blown away by Enron, World Com, mutual fund scandals. If you’re one of those children who’ve been faked out by the words when we’re leaving millions of children behind every day and disrespecting teachers in America.”

The crowd cheered. The candidate continued. “If you’re someone who cares about the environment and the legacy that we owe our children. If you have the least sense of moral responsibility and decency and care about the other 96% of humankind and our role in the world and how we truly make America stronger. If you’re any of those people, and that’s most of America, it’s not only mission not accomplished, it’s mission abandoned, mission not even legitimately attempted.”

Democrats’ desire for a candidate they think can beat Bush, combined with one who’s been winning primaries, has meant they have been willing to overlook a few rough edges.

Whether voters who tune in during what increasingly looks like a Kerry-Bush matchup this fall react the same way remains to be seen.