Pedantic, Low-Key Style Seen Slowing Kerrey Bid : Politics: Democratic contender has a good grasp of the issues but he leaves his listeners less than enthused.

For nearly an hour, Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey has been patiently and methodically talking about health care costs, the rise of Japan in the world economy, the unwieldy federal bureaucracy, outdated telecommunications policy and the trade deficit--touching, in short, on the problems that he says have contributed to the nation’s economic mess.

Leaving an audience of students in the Milford High School library, the Democratic presidential contender is approached by a shy boy in a faded red baseball cap. “If you were President today,” the boy asks, “what would you do about the recession?”

That Kerrey could talk about topics all linked to that issue, yet leave a seemingly attentive listener still wanting to know what he would do about it says more about the candidate and his problems than it does about his questioner.

During a recent swing through New Hampshire, the mild-mannered Kerrey left the small groups he encountered less than enthused. And he is leaving some political figures in Washington to question just why he is running for President.

From town to town, he offered prescriptions for the economy, but his apparent aversion to hard-hitting rhetoric and his preference for analytical discourses seemed to create uncertainty among his audiences about just what approach he would take.

It has been a common reaction. And the result, one Democratic activist says, is a presistent view that “something is not quite clicking” with the Kerrey campaign.

To be sure, plenty of time remains for his White House bid to find its stride. He won plaudits for his forceful performance in the Democratic candidates’ debate last Sunday night, during which he confronted the charges of rival former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. concerning the influence of money on politics. The moment served as a reminder that Kerrey’s potential is not to be dismissed.

The candidate is relatively young--48 years old, at the top-end of the baby-boom generation at whom his message is aimed. He is attractive--sandy-hair kept stylishly over the ears and across a high forehead, a haunted look in his blue eyes. He can claim experience in the ways of government--he was governor of Nebraska from 1983 to 1987, and he is a four-year veteran of the U.S. Senate. He is a Vietnam War hero, with a Medal of Honor to prove it, as well as a self-made millionaire-businessman. And, noted one wag, he even has “a divorced wife who thinks he’s a great guy.”

On paper, the campaign looks good, too: Staffed largely by political veterans--several worked in Gary Hart’s two unsuccessful campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination--it is well-organized, at least as well-organized as a fledgling presidential campaign can be. It runs on time and has eight field offices already operating in New Hampshire in preparation for the state’s crucial Feb. 18 primary. The advance men are using walkie-talkies, and the gadgets even work.

Still, even some members of the Kerrey camp admit that he has been struggling, in part, because of the expectations that surround him.

Said one Kerrey aide: “What everyone is looking for from Kerrey is, ‘Give me the charisma--come on, give me the charisma.’ ”

So far, he hasn’t delivered.

A recent missed opportunity occurred as Kerrey spoke to 300 students at the University of New Hampshire Memorial Union Building in Durham. He gets a few chuckles when he talks about his parents, who, he says, “built a paradise for seven ungrateful, snot-nosed children.” There is a smattering of applause when he criticizes the Supreme Court, saying it “seems determined to take every freedom away.” But when he finishes his speech, there is no rush of applause. Nor is there a rush of students to sign up for his campaign.

“Nothing really struck me as particularly relevant,” sophomore Chip Moyer said. “He didn’t make a great impression on me.”

Regardless of the setting--a living room where neighbors have gathered to hear Kerrey’s proposal for providing affordable health insurance for all Americans; a meeting of an unemployed persons’ support group at a church in Concord, or a candidates’ forum at the National Education Assn. in Washington--the candidate invariably presents a detailed assessment of the nation’s ills and his plans for corrective action.

It’s got all the flare of the outline for an undergraduate’s senior thesis. Indeed, Kerrey breaks his assessment into multiple parts, and then breaks some of those parts into subcategories.

“Turgid, bureaucratic prose,” is the way political scientist Ross K. Baker of Rutgers University describes it. “It is a Senate floor speech in support of a non-germane amendment. It focuses on policy, and folks don’t elect a policy nerd.”

Kerrey has heard it all before. And to some degree, he shrugs it off.

It is midafternoon. In a luxury van, Kerrey looks at the souvenir T-shirts he picked up that morning for his teen-age son and daughter after a meeting with college students at the Hard Rock Cafe in Boston. He takes a bite from his lunch--turkey, lettuce, tomato and mustard on white. He tells a reporter, “I’m improving. . . . I’d guess I’m 70% there. I’m not as good as I’d like to be.

“Maybe I need more applause lines,” he concedes.

He washes the thought down with a sip from a bottle of Diet Coke. “I’m not terribly fond of applause lines,” he adds.

Later, as the van rolls past boulders of dirty snow edging the strip-mall parking lots of southern New Hampshire--and the occasional empty store offering mute testimony to New England’s economic misery--Kerrey expresses his disdain for the era of sound-bite politics.

“The definition of an idea in a political context,” he says, “is a non-profane expletive.”

So far, there are no such bumper sticker slogans in his campaign speech.

“Kerrey’s idea of communicating,” says Michael McCurry, a Democratic political operative serving on the senator’s campaign staff, is to tell an audience: “I’ll spend the next 15 minutes and I’ll make a very interesting argument. You listen very carefully, and at the end of 15 minutes, you tell me if you approve, and if you do, you can applaud.”

Kerrey has two goals in his speech: to introduce himself to his audience, and to tell his listeners where he would lead the country--a prospect that, on more than one occasion, produces a self-amused chuckle when he says, “as President of the United States, I would. . . . “

A member of the elite Navy SEAL special operations unit, Kerrey lost the lower half of his right leg when a grenade exploded at his feet on a mission in Vietnam in 1969. From that experience, he says, he learned that “we become free when we are willing to risk it all for somebody else.”

As for the nation’s future, he says it is time “to build for greatness.” To do that, he would:

--Reorganize the federal government, combining some Cabinet departments so that the current 14 would be reduced to seven.

--Generate “new wealth” by devising, among other things, “the best communications system in the world, the best transportation system in the world,” redrawing the relationship between the federal government and local education officials and establishing a new health care financing program.

--Fight the foreign trade deficit by using sanctions against practitioners of unfair trading practices, expanding markets to the former Soviet bloc and developing new trade relationships with such Third World markets as Brazil and India.

Early one morning in Nashua, Kerrey provides one more snapshot of the presidential candidate at work. He leans his back against a wall, and begins reading aloud from his text:

“Chug, chug, chug. Puff, puff, puff. Ding-dong. The little train rumbled over the tracks. She was a happy little train for she had such a jolly load to carry. Her cars were filled full of good things for boys and girls. There were toy animals--giraffes with long necks, teddy bears with almost no necks at all, and even a baby elephant. . . . “

Propped against the pink wall, his legs stretched out and crossed in front of him, he is holding his audience--13 boys and girls aged 3 1/2 to 4 1/2--spellbound as he reads the story of The Little Engine That Could, which he selected from their bookshelf at the Tracy House Child Care Center.

“I think I can, I think I can, I think I can,” Kerrey reads, relating the engine’s efforts to crest a mountain.

A classic children’s story. A classic campaign photo opportunity.

“I thought I could, I thought I could, I thought I could. . . “ the candidate chants, as the engine meets its challenge.

Can Kerrey?

Says campaign aide McCurry: “This is the fundamental question about this campaign right now: Does Kerrey have a way of talking about the future of this country, and his personal experience, that people feel is more compelling than the other candidates?”

He adds: “Kerrey has a real gut feeling for where he wants this country to be after four years as President, but he hasn’t found a way to articulate it.”