By Sally Jacobs, Globe Staff, 5/1/2002

WASHINGTON, D.C. - It was the kind of get-acquainted meeting that passes for relaxation in the nation's capital. On one side of the gleaming cocktail table at the trendy Caucus Room restaurant sat US Senator John F. Kerry; on the other side was Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, the largest union in the country.

''So,'' said Kerry, placing his frosted glass on the table after a few minutes of chitchat. ''What do you think my image is? Do you find me aloof?''

''Well, what I read about you is that you are aloof,'' replied Stern, leaning forward. ''But personally, to be honest, I don't really find that. I think most people don't know who you are.''

And so Kerry, a three-term senator and a national public figure for three decades, told Stern some things about himself. Like how he snowboards and windsurfs. And flies airplanes - usually a twin-engine Cessna - and plays ice hockey. He even told him about the brand-new black Harley-Davidson motorcycle that would soon be delivered to the garage of his Beacon Hill mansion.

''When he told me he'd been riding a motorcyle for years, I was aghast,'' Stern said. ''I was impressed. I mean if it is true he does these things, I think people would find that very interesting. In this era, if you are running for president, people want to know who you are. Nobody can become president who can't pass what I call the hang-out test. Can you go to a bar and hang out with people?''

Clinton could. George Bush is still ordering rounds. But John Kerry is not the kind of guy most would cozy up to at a bar. Odds are good that he is not even at the bar. But as he gears up for a run for president in 2004 - and like virtually all those expected to run, he insists that he hasn't made up his mind yet - he would like you to know that if you did run into him at a bar, he could talk about a lot of things other than fuel-efficiency standards and the fate of the Yalta agreement. That he is no longer the John Kerry lampooned in a ''Doonesbury'' cartoon for his preening ambition while still in his 20s. That if you knew him, you might actually like him.

Whether Kerry is right won't become clear until the great presidential production machine has lumbered a lot further down the campaign trail. Many voters know him only as the tall guy trailing behind Senator Ted Kennedy, or confuse him with that other Kerrey - Bob - who used to haunt the Senate. But as the state's junior senator gradually unfurls his unofficial campaign for the White House, he knows that name recognition is only one of his problems. Another is that Bush is, early in his second year in office, one of the most popular US presidents in modern history.

And then there is Kerry, who knows that his campaign now is, as much as anything, about letting a new - he would say the true - Kerry show.

''I think I was too serious for a long time about the issues,'' said Kerry. ''You have to give people a better sense of your approachability. ... I think it's important to laugh at yourself. I didn't used to.''

In charm's way?
John Forbes Kerry is, in many respects, a made-to-order presidential candidate. He is smart. He has a solid legislative record. He commands a constellation of the powerful committee seats in the Senate. He is a decorated Vietnam war hero (the ''3'' on the license plate of his 1985 Dodge convertible is for his three Purple Hearts). He is a moderate Democrat who defeated one of the state's most popular Republicans. He is so deeply rooted in Brahmin earth he could almost out-Yankee George Bush. At 58, he has the trim good looks of an athlete. And, thanks to his marriage to Teresa Heinz, he is the richest man in the US Congress.

The one thing he is said to lack is charm, that ineffable elixir of modern-day presidential politics, the fuel of the ''hang-out test.'' The rap on Kerry has long been that he is a frosty fish, a man a little too impressed with himself, not to mention his four lavish homes (Georgetown; Beacon Hill; Nantucket; Ketchum, Idaho). An Esquire story last year likened him to a headwaiter and called him ''an odd bird, even by the considerable standards of Massachusetts political fauna.'' It also dubbed him the front-runner of the Democratic presidential pack. Few people are indifferent about him.

Kerry and Co. scoff at such coverage. Dusty cliches, they say, rolling their eyes. After all, he defeated the prince of affability, former governor Bill Weld, in 1996, didn't he? (''If people thought he was an arrogant SOB, they wouldn't vote for him,'' observed one staffer.) And once you get to know him, say family and friends, he is roaring good fun, always hungry for adventure. His younger sister, Diana, calls him ''a daredevil, that Johnny. Always was. He likes a challenge.''

What others interpret as stiffness or arrogance is simply his desire to maintain some privacy. Kerry says that in the past he was shy and found it hard ''to go out and dump yourself into other people and just walk up to a table and say, `Hi, here I am.' ... If anything, I would say there is a shyness, a basic sort of reserve, if you will, that would hold me back.''

Kerry, in fact, is better in person than he was in the past. He has a certain buoyancy, his rangy 6-foot-3-inch frame always in motion. He touches people a lot, his long hands resting on a shoulder here, a back there. And, with the largely hard-core Democrats he encounters on the trail, there is often good chemistry. At a boisterous women's luncheon at the Sheraton Boston Hotel and Towers in March, five female senators, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, testified to his woman-friendly policy credentials, while a mob of college students outside shrieked at his arrival, waving signs that said ''Run Kerry Run'' and ''Women 4 Kerry.'' After a meeting of the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington last month, one attendee, Marcela Urrutia, grabbed his hand after he spoke, saying, ''Oh, please, please, Senator Kerry. Won't you run for president?'' Urrutia, a small-business specialist, added later, ''He seems very real to me. And I'm a pretty good when it comes to character.''

And at the Florida Democratic Convention in Orlando two weeks ago, delegates warmed to him despite an unremarkable speech. Kerry met with small groups of teachers and labor leaders, wearing shirt sleeves and gripping a bottle of water, as he fielded questions. As he does most everywhere he goes, Kerry asked if they would vote for him for president.

''We might,'' responded Maureen Dinnen, president of the Florida Education Association.

''Well, this is an interesting dance,'' Kerry said with a laugh.

The private Kerry
For all that people hail him at airports and ask for his autograph, which they do, Kerry never quite seems to blend in. He is not a frequent figure on the Washington weekend-party circuit, preferring to retreat to his Beacon Hill manse, or to the Idaho home he shares with his wife. The sports he favors are mostly solitary: rollerblading, windsurfing, skiing, motorcycle riding. Heinz believes such pastimes are, for her husband, a form of ''meditation. Maybe you go to places where you need to heal, to recover. Mostly it's the anger of Vietnam, of losing so many good friends.''

Kerry has talked publicly about his Vietnam experience for so many years, of the valor on the Mekong Delta that won him the Silver Star and the Bronze Star, that it is hard to imagine he has memories yet to process, or anything spontaneous left to say. And yet, standing before the large color prints of his Navy gunboat crew that hang in his office, Kerry seems moved anew. ''It is long, long away,'' he said slowly, his hand touching one of the pictures. ''But it's part of me. It's part of my history. When people are trying to kill you on a frequent basis, it stays with you.''

One of Kerry's prized mementos of war is a ''ChiCom'' rifle, a Chinese Communist weapon he brought home from Vietnam. He's never shot it - not that he has any aversion to shooting. He is, rare among Massachusetts liberals, an unapologetic hunter. In the past he has shot quail and dove but now only occasionally shoots deer with his cousins on Naushon Island, one of the chain of Elizabeth Islands off the Cape that is owned by the Forbes family, from which Kerry is descended. Kerry says he likes to hunt, ''because there is something very fundamental about going out and hunting your meals. And I insist: If I hunt it, I eat it. I will not go out and kill something just to kill it.''

The early years
Of all the family experiences that set him apart, it may have been his earliest years that molded his manner - and reserve. Kerry, whose father was a diplomat, spent large portions of his childhood in Europe. Kerry was sent to boarding school in Switzerland at age 11, as was the fashion then, when his parents were living in Berlin. But Kerry was not happy about it. His mother, Rosemary, 88, who was raised in France and England and did not come to the States until she was 19, says, ''I realize now that he was very homesick. I'm sure it had a large impact on him.''

And so one day he ran away. Or so family members say. Kerry's mother says that Kerry fled the school and headed for an Italian section of Switzerland. But Kerry, the second of four children, tells the story differently. He says he was looking for his elder sister, Peggy, who attended another Swiss school, and that he was merely playing hooky for a day. He was certainly not fleeing - the very idea seems to clash with his sense of who he is.

''I was not, quote, `running away from school, ''' Kerry said. ''I was basically playing hooky. I had every intention of returning.''

Which raises the question: Did Kerry, as famous for his crisp dark suits as a certain Boy Scout aura of propriety, ever deliberately break the rules in school? ''Oh, yeah. Absolutely,'' he says with a laugh. Asked what he did, there is a longish silence. And then Kerry tells of the time he was in school and refused to eat his dessert. So adamant was young John that he was made to sit at the table for more than two hours in front of the dessert.

''It just became a battle of the wills,'' exclaimed Kerry. ''I was just gagging on it, and I think I finally won. It was rhubarb, and to this day I cannot eat rhubarb.''

If that is not exactly the sort of story that Harley riders trade as they roar down the interstate, Kerry admits to having strayed from the straight and narrow a few other times, too. Sort of. During his 1990 campaign, Kerry admitted that he had tried marijuana, but said he didn't like it and never did it again. He was arrested for civil disobedience in 1971 during an antiwar demonstration. He admits to running red lights. And to a few speeding tickets. Asked if he had committed any moral wrong, Kerry said, ''If so, that is between me and my confessor priest.''

Even as a child, Kerry burned with the same fierce energy that keeps him criss-crossing the country from fund-raisers to conventions. In the early 1950s he handed out buttons for Adlai Stevenson, and as a teenager cruised the North Shore, trumpeting the names of state and local candidates through a public address system mounted on top of the car. He often concluded his pitch, according to his sister Diana Kerry, with the words '' and John Kerry for sheriff.'' While critics have long charged that he flits from one issue to another in search of the TV camera's glare, family members say it's just his pace.

''As a kid, Johnny would have been diagnosed as hyperactive if such a thing had been around then,'' said Diana Kerry, 54, who recently returned to Massachusetts after teaching overseas for two decades. ''This is one of the things that makes him harder to know. I mean, he just isn't someone you sit down with and talk to for hours in front of the fireplace.''

Six strings attached
And so when Kerry bought a guitar and began to play in order to court Teresa Heinz some years ago, his mother was ''quite surprised. It was not what I expected of Johnny,'' Rosemary Kerry said.

The guitar has become a symbol of what Kerry's inner circle might call the ''new'' Kerry. If the old Kerry was brash and fiercely ambitious, or ''too serious,'' in Kerry's words, they say the new Kerry is more seasoned and reflective, more able to connect.

Kerry, in fact, has experienced a number of seismic events in recent years. After seven years of post-divorce bachelorhood, he married Heinz, a woman as ebullient and outspoken as he is reserved, in 1995. (Heinz is also forthright, the kind of woman who, noticing during an interview that her pants zipper is completely undone, declares, ''Well, look at that,'' and zips it up without missing a beat. ) The following year he endured a grueling battle for reelection against Weld, which many liken to a ''near-death experience'' for Kerry. And then, in 2000, his father died. All of which is said to have left him a more grounded man. He has gone, to put it one way, from playing bass with the Electras at St. Paul's School, in Concord, N.H., to playing classical melodies for his friend James Taylor. Kim Taylor, Taylor's wife, tells of listening to Kerry play guitar in his living room.

''It was after dinner and James saw the guitar and John picked it up,'' Kim Taylor recalled. ''He was so excited about his progress. I mean, he was undaunted. So he played a couple of songs, and James was very impressed. He was so excited about the instrument. He said it helped him relax.''

It does not have quite the same impact on his staff, who say that Kerry will sometimes pull his guitar out in the middle of a meeting and start playing his favorite show tunes from ''Cats'' and ''Evita.'' Kerry's tastes are eclectic at best: He takes classical lessons and plays some works of Spanish virtuoso Andres Segovia, but is also a fan of the Beatles and the theme song from ''E. T.'' Whatever the tune, the guitar seems to be part of the process that the senator, who occasionally refers to himself in the third person, describes as ''the growing and greening of John Kerry.''

''When I started out in politics, I really saw issues,'' explained Kerry. ''We want to end the war. We've got to do this and that. And I think more and more as I've gotten older I see relationships. I see people and life as it affects them.''

The senator up close
No one is more succinct about Kerry than the younger of his two daughters, Vanessa, 25, a first-year student at Harvard Medical School. (His other daughter, Alexandra, 28, is an aspiring writer in Los Angeles.) Her key adjective for her father: goofy. She tells of her father jumping from behind rocks to surprise her and her cousins on country walks. And of calling her at night on the telephone to play her a tune on the guitar. And of his ''bad, bad jokes.'' Vanessa Kerry, who wears her father's blue oxford shirt bearing the initials JFK during an interview, is quick to say that her father likes to win. He is, after all, ''the first off the boat and the first on the trail and the first into the freezing water. When he's leading the charge, he's the first.'' But he also taught her that being first is not everything.

''My father always made sure my sister and I didn't get a sense of ego. We were special not because of who we were, but because we had opportunities,'' she said. ''And with opportunity comes responsibility. My father has always recognized that he had a lot of blessings.''

Vanessa Kerry says the changes in her father's life and particularly his close race in 1996 caused him to ''reassess himself. I think it's just wakened him up to the importance of relationships, that it's not just [about] getting the work done.''

The race, certainly, inflamed the topic of Kerry's supposed remoteness like never before. Kerry won by 7 percent and says he learned some important lessons: ''One of the reasons I had the race that I had with Bill Weld was because people didn't know me. And I think one of the reasons I won the race was because people got to know me.''

But as Kerry eyes the 2004 campaign, some who know him aren't sure how well he will wear. ''John is like a first date,'' said one former staffer. ''He's very likable at first glance. But then you find out your date is not paying enough attention, or not thinking about you and is not really around.''

Michael Barone, editor of The Almanac of American Politics and a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report, puts it a little differently: ''This is a man whose world is Louisburg Square, Nantucket, and Georgetown. His demeanor comes across as a person who has a certain amount of contempt for those who do not share his views. They must simply be ignorant or foolish. If he runs for president, I think this is something he has to work on.''

He is. To date, there are two possible opponents for his Senate seat: Libertarian Michael Cloud, a self-described ''fund-raising specialist,'' and Anthony Kandel, a political novice and history teacher, neither of them exactly formidable. So Kerry is free to take his campaign far and wide. Already this year he has been in California seven days and New York six days. He has addressed Democratic gatherings in three states, including New Hampshire, and is scheduled to address two more in the next month, including the Massachusetts Jefferson Jackson dinner. Between appearances, he meets frequently with interest groups, particularly labor and women, and has a new Web site (JohnKerry.com) that showcases his activities.

Kerry has also proved to be a potent fund-raiser, which is a good thing, because Heinz says she's not chipping in. During the 1996 race, she says, people ''felt, `Oh, she can help him. Well, [expletive],''' declared Heinz, sitting on a chintz sofa in the couple's Beacon Hill home. ''It's not a choice if you believe in democratic principles. ... I can think of better things to do with the money than give it to television stations.''

To see more photos of John Kerry's early days, go to www.boston.com/globe/living.

Although few doubt that he is girding for presidential battle, Kerry is proceeding with characteristic caution. He may ride a Harley, but with some things he is not a risk taker.

''There have been people who have run for president for whom there wasn't really a chance that they might get elected. It was just implausible,'' said Kerry. ''I don't want to be like that. If I decided to do it, I want to do it ... because it is real. Not quixotic. That it's real.''

The reality is the grinding demand of presidential politics. There are voters to be wooed, media to be accommodated, no matter the indignities that often entails.

And so it was that several weeks ago, a moment occurred that shows just how far Kerry still has to go. There he was, crammed into a car on the tiny underground train that runs the distance from the Dirkson Senate Office Building to the US Capitol building - all 366 yards of it - with a CNN reporter and a phalanx of camerapeople and aides. And there was Kerry, in his charcoal-gray suit, sitting as the train churned back and forth, back and forth, back and forth between its twin poles, agreeably shouting the answers to questions he has been asked many, many times before.

And there, waiting on the platform, was his driver, holding a cup of low-fat strawberry yogurt for Kerry, a trickle of pink sliding down his hand.

This story ran on page D1 of the Boston Globe on 5/1/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.