Kerry Trying to Adjust His Image, Style to Reach Mainstream Voters

It is 12 degrees on a Saturday afternoon, and John F. Kerry is standing in Sarah Swisher’s crowded living room amid a collection of folk art and roughly 100 sweater-clad Johnson County Democrats.

The Massachusetts senator is dressed in a blue chambray shirt, brown corduroys and a chunky black running watch, an outfit that gives an appearance of studied nonchalance.

But with his back to the wide bay window, holding forth on subjects from AIDS to global warming, it often seems as though the solemn Kerry is on the floor of the U.S. Senate rather than auditioning before a group of party activists chewing oatmeal cookies. There is plenty of Bush bashing, an obligatory paean to the heartland and then references such as the one to “e-suh” -- an acronym for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act -- that harken to the Beltway and land here with a decided clunk.

Iowa is the nation’s presidential culling field, host of the first vote of the 2004 campaign and the place where White House hopefuls stand for up-close inspection in union halls, church basements and tryouts like the one in Swisher’s restored 1870 Victorian.

It is politicking of a special sort, eye-level and intimate, that presents a particular challenge for the blue-blood Kerry to connect in a way he has never had to before.

Iowa’s leadoff caucuses are about a year away and the field is still forming, so it is too soon to anoint a Democratic front-runner, here or nationally. But at age 59, after a solid year-plus of campaigning, Kerry is arguably the first among equals. He starts with an enviable fund-raising base, draws impressive crowds -- including 600 people who turned out in snowy weather in Des Moines -- and already has attracted many of the party’s most talented consultants.

It helps that he looks presidential: the stately bearing, the long, craggy face and that thatch of salt-and-pepper hair. “Stature” is the word aides use.

But detractors say Kerry is too calculating, too cautious and overly mannered. “Aloof” is the word they use.

Clearly, Kerry is no backslapper or raconteur. His leisure pursuits run to solitary sports like windsurfing, skiing and in-line skating.

But as he seeks the White House, Kerry is working hard to slough off some of his upper-crust demeanor. Tellingly, the one article his campaign has distributed throughout Iowa is not an account of his Vietnam War heroism or 18-year Senate career, but a Men’s Journal clip that chronicles his lifelong affection for high-performance motorcycles.

Kerry also has tried to relate by leaving the fusty Senate behind, distancing himself from “that other city ... full of people who don’t understand the real world.” At a brunch in Dubuque, a questioner points out that no U.S. senator has been elected president since John F. Kennedy in 1960.

“What’s happened to senators who’ve run is they have not gotten out of Washington,” replied Kerry, now serving his fourth term on Capitol Hill. “You have to not talk the language of Washington. You have to forget about being a senator.”

Kennedy shadowed Kerry throughout his Iowa swing last month, a welcome companion on rounds that took him from Des Moines’ fine arts theater to a Linn County Democratic Party dinner to the requisite stops in neighborhood basements and living rooms. Similarities between the two include a graceful manner, an affluent upbringing (Kerry’s “F.” is for Forbes, one of Boston’s oldest families) and a Massachusetts pedigree.

Kerry invoked the late president at nearly every turn -- from obscure references to the 1960 presidential campaign to challenging the nation to slash its oil dependence, a la Kennedy’s man-to-the-moon mission.

“I come from Massachusetts,” Kerry said. And in a line that invariably got big laughs: “Massachusetts, as some of you may know, is a Wampanoag Indian word for ‘land of many Kennedys.’ ”

But there is another Bay State politician, cool and cerebral like Kerry, who stalks his White House ambitions and causes people such as Tom Schattauer to wonder.

“How are you going to deal with the presumption that a liberal Democrat from Massachusetts can’t be elected president?” Schattauer, a seminary teacher, bluntly asked Kerry at the brunch in Dubuque. It is a question many Democrats ask.

So, not for the first or last time, the senator sought to emphasize how he differs from former Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, who failed as the party’s 1988 presidential nominee. Kerry started by citing his war record.

“In 1859, Daniel Webster went before the United States Senate and he began a great speech about the Missouri Compromise, and he said: ‘I come to the floor not as a Massachusetts man but as an American,’ ” Kerry said. “When I went to Vietnam and we were on a boat together

Kerry also tries to shed the liberal label by stressing things such as his support for welfare restrictions, deficit reduction, free trade and teacher accountability that, in his words, “define me as someone who is reaching out to mainstream America.”

But his strongest armor is unquestionably his Vietnam War record -- a Silver Star, Bronze Star, two combat tours and three Purple Hearts -- which separates him not just from Dukakis but the rest of the Democratic contestants.

“One thing they’re not going to be able to do to this guy, which they tried to do to me and [Bill] Clinton, is question his patriotism,” said Dukakis, who shrugged off Kerry’s efforts to distance himself. “He was getting shot on the Mekong River while most of these guys were looking for deferments.”

Kerry volunteered for the Navy after graduating from Yale in 1966. He requested combat duty as a way to secure a command position and served 10 months in Vietnam, as a skipper on a patrol boat in the Mekong Delta and the Gulf of Tonkin.

He ended his four years of service disillusioned with the war and convinced that the nation’s political leaders weren’t honestly fighting to win. It was front-page news when he went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in his military fatigues and demanded, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

Kerry offered a different set of remarks at each Iowa event, covering a sweep of subjects from affirmative action to national security. In a delivery that was often stiff, Kerry ignored his Democratic rivals and instead focused his attacks on the president. “There’s a lot simpler solution” to overthrowing Saddam Hussein, he quipped before a packed house at Des Moines’ Temple for the Performing Arts. “Just send Bush’s economic team over there.”

At the end of each appearance crowds swarmed the senator, who jangled the change in his pocket and turned idle chitchat into a series of mini-policy discussions: on veterans benefits, college expenses, corporate greed and pension reform. “I have a lot of listening to do,” he told reporters, displaying another trait -- humility -- much appreciated by Iowa voters. “And I want to learn as much as I can.”

Still, it is rather soon, even in this early-bird state, for the average Democratic voter to commit.

Swisher, who was Kerry’s host in Iowa City, dashed out the door just after his blue van pulled away, arriving minutes late for an event she was hosting at a union hall across town for Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt, another presidential hopeful.

In Dubuque, Teri Goodmann worked hard to make the Kerry brunch a success. She bought 100 bagels and three quiches, hired a valet parking service, borrowed a 100-cup coffee tankard from the local American Legion Hall and recruited her 11-year-old daughter and two neighbors to check coats. Despite all that, she is still undecided between Kerry, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina and Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is considering another try for the White House.

“I told Kerry he was in my top tier,” Goodmann said after he left. “But first I’ve got to talk to Biden and see what he’s doing.”