I.

Introduction

John F. Kerry, born in 1943, American politician and Democratic Party candidate for the United States presidency in 2004. Kerry, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, lost to incumbent President George W. Bush in a hard-fought battle that divided the American public.

Kerry became the Democratic Party nominee after overcoming an early lead in the polls by former Vermont governor Howard Dean. Kerry won the Iowa presidential caucus and the New Hampshire primary, both in January 2004. He then swept all but two of the remaining primaries and caucuses and became the Democratic Party’s nominee at its July convention. Prior to the convention Kerry selected U.S. senator John Edwards of North Carolina as his vice-presidential running mate.

A graduate of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, Kerry served as an officer in the Vietnam War (1957-1975), winning numerous commendations for bravery. He returned to the United States disillusioned about the war and rose to national prominence as he led a group of veterans who sought a U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. Kerry was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984 and was reelected in 1990, 1996, and 2002.

II.

Early Life

John Forbes Kerry was born on December 11, 1943, at a military hospital in Denver, Colorado. He is a descendent of some of America’s oldest families. His mother, born Rosemary Forbes, was descended from the Forbes family, which helped develop trade between Boston, Massachusetts, and China in the early 1800s. She was also related to the Winthrop family, which traces its ancestry to John Winthrop, a Puritan from England who was the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Kerry’s grandparents on his father’s side of the family were Fritz and Ida Kohn, who lived in the Austrian Empire in the late 1800s. Facing anti-Semitism, Fritz changed his first name to Frederick and the family name to Kerry. The two converted to Catholicism and immigrated to the United States in 1905. Frederick Kerry faced financial problems and committed suicide in Boston in 1921, leaving behind a daughter and two sons, one of them Richard Kerry, the father of John Kerry.

Richard Kerry grew up in Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale University in 1937 and Harvard University Law School in 1940. He met Rosemary Forbes while traveling during a summer vacation in France, where Rosemary lived on the Forbes estate. In January 1941, while stationed at an Army base in Alabama where he tested planes as an Army Air Corps pilot, he and Rosemary were married. He became seriously ill with tuberculosis and was hospitalized in Denver, Colorado, where Rosemary gave birth to their second child, John Kerry. A few months later, the family moved to Massachusetts, where John spent the next six years of his life.

In 1950 the Kerrys moved to Washington, D.C., where Richard began a career as a foreign service officer. The Kerry family was intrigued by another person from Massachusetts who also had arrived in Washington, D.C.: the young congressman John F. Kennedy, who later became a U.S. senator, U.S. president, and a role model for John Kerry.

III.

Education

A.

Prep Schools

By 1955 the Kerrys had moved to Berlin, West Germany, where Richard Kerry served as legal adviser to the U.S. High Commission for Germany. John Kerry learned about the U.S. Cold War against Communism in the city that marked the dividing line between East and West at the height of the Cold War. In 1956 Kerry was sent to prep school in Switzerland. This started a pattern in his life in which he would be sent to all-male boarding schools until he went to college.

Kerry returned to Massachusetts to attend prep school at age 13. For the next five years he was enrolled at the elite St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, where he founded a debate club and became a sports standout in hockey and soccer. In 1960, at 16 years of age, Kerry gave a speech at the school favoring the election of John F. Kennedy as president. Two years later, Kerry was dating the half-sister of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and went sailing twice with President Kennedy off the coast of Rhode Island.

B.

Yale

In the fall of 1962, Kerry enrolled at Yale University, where he became a leader in the Yale Political Union and the debate club. Many of Kerry’s friends viewed him as a future political leader, which helped Kerry become a member of the exclusive Skull and Bones society in his senior year. Kerry performed well in college, earning a bachelor’s degree in political science, but he also learned outside the classroom, becoming a pilot at the Yale Flying Club and learning to perform aerobatics.

Kerry was given a high honor at Yale by being chosen to deliver the class oration to the graduating class of 1966. He delivered a speech that questioned whether the United States should be involved in the Vietnam War, saying: “The United States must, I think, bring itself to understand that the policy of intervention that was right for Western Europe does not and cannot find the same application to the rest of the world.”

While at Yale, Kerry met Julia Thorne, whom he married in 1970. They had two children, Alexandra, born in 1973, and Vanessa, born in 1976.

IV.

The Vietnam War Period

A.

Tour of Duty

Despite Kerry’s misgivings about the U.S. role in Vietnam, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1966, before he graduated from Yale. Protests against the war were just beginning to grow. By the time Kerry finished his naval training, the U.S. role had escalated greatly.

As Kerry began the first of his two tours of duty with the Navy, his best friend from Yale, Richard Pershing, the grandson of World War I general Jack Pershing, was killed in combat in Vietnam. Kerry’s first tour of duty was a noncombat tour during which he was only briefly in Vietnam. He reported for duty in 1967 on the USS Gridley, a guided-missile frigate which arrived in the Gulf of Tonkin off Vietnam in 1968.

Kerry saw intensive combat on his second tour of duty, starting in the fall of 1968. He volunteered to command a 15-m (50-ft) aluminum craft that was officially known as a Patrol Craft Fast (PCF) and commonly called a “swift boat.” The boats were used to patrol the canals and rivers of South Vietnam. With five crewmembers under his command, Kerry frequently engaged the enemy.

During four and a half months of combat, Kerry was awarded three Purple Hearts, all for relatively minor wounds. He won the Silver Star, a high commendation for gallantry, for his action on February 28, 1969, in which he leapt from his boat and killed an enemy fighter who was carrying a rocket launcher. He won the Bronze Star for rescuing a U.S. soldier who had gone overboard in a canal and was under enemy fire. See also Medals and Decorations.

Kerry was deeply affected by his experience in Vietnam. Five of his friends died in the war. Kerry also had concerns about whether the U.S. policy that enabled sailors to fire on people in so-called free-fire zones was resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians. Kerry had gone into military service with the memory of how U.S. forces were viewed as the liberating force in much of Europe, but he had become concerned that the U.S. military was not as welcome in Vietnam.

B.

Antiwar Activist

Kerry returned home in the spring of 1969 and became attracted to the antiwar movement. Released honorably from active duty in January 1970, Kerry briefly tried but failed to become the Democratic nominee for a U.S. House seat in Massachusetts. Kerry then took a more active antiwar role, becoming a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) in early 1971. By April 1971 Kerry had become a public figure in the antiwar movement. On April 22 he testified before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, saying, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” He told the senators that U.S. soldiers had committed many atrocities, including some who had “personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads.” See also Anti-Vietnam War Movement.

Kerry’s charges that the U.S. military committed war crimes in Vietnam angered many Vietnam veterans. They also resented the fact that Kerry and other VVAW protesters threw away their battle medals and ribbons in a protest at the Capitol the next day. When it was later disclosed that Kerry had thrown away his battle ribbons but not his medals, some critics charged that he retained his medals because he wanted to use them to his political advantage in the future.

Soon after the protests, Kerry appeared on the television program Meet The Press, and said: “There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones.” He went on to say that those who designed the policy that allowed U.S. servicemen to shoot at anyone in a free-fire zone were “war criminals.” In 2004 Kerry appeared on the same news program and said: “I think some soldiers were angry at me for that, and I understand that and I regret that, because I love them. But the words were honest but on the other hand, they were a little bit over the top.” Critics from both the left and the right said this was another sign of political waffling on Kerry’s part.

Kerry’s appearance on the public stage had a dramatic impact on his life and career. Weeks after Kerry delivered his Senate testimony, he was asked on the television program 60 Minutes whether he wanted to be president. Kerry called it a “crazy question.” But even President Richard Nixon was noticing the young protester. In secretly recorded Oval Office tapes, Nixon said that Kerry was the “real star” of the Senate hearing. Nixon’s chief of staff H. R. “Bob” Haldeman agreed, saying Kerry was “a Kennedy-type guy. He looks like a Kennedy, and he, he talks exactly like a Kennedy.” On another occasion, Nixon told his counsel, Charles Colson, that Kerry was “sort of a phony.” Colson agreed, saying, “He’s politically ambitious and just looking for an issue.”

Kerry eventually left the leadership of the VVAW, which he believed had become too radical. Nixon, meanwhile, ran for reelection and told the nation that he had a plan to end the war. Kerry decided that he could have the most impact as a congressman, and he once again set out to win a seat in the U.S. House.

V.

Early Political Career

After scouring the state for an appropriate congressional district, Kerry decided to run from the working-class city of Lowell. He immediately encountered charges that he was an outsider, or carpetbagger. A local newspaper attacked Kerry for his antiwar protests, calling him a “radical leftist.” President Nixon sent his son-in-law, Edward Cox, to campaign against Kerry. To the dismay of Democrats, Kerry lost the race, and Republicans took it as a sign that there was a “silent majority” which favored Nixon’s policies. Nixon was reelected at the same time, but he would be forced to resign in August 1974 as a result of the Watergate scandal.

Kerry decided it was time to put aside politics and become a lawyer. He earned a law degree from Boston College, and in 1976 he started working as a prosecutor in Middlesex County in Massachusetts. He won convictions in a high-profile murder case and also was responsible for the conviction of a notorious gangster. “I’m proud to say I never lost a case in Middlesex,” Kerry said years later. The experience also provided a counterweight to those who would argue that Kerry was just another liberal politician; whatever his ideology, he had shown that he could be a tough prosecutor.

Kerry moved into private practice in 1979, working for two and a half years on lawsuits ranging from wrongful death cases to faulty hair implantation cases. Then, in 1982, ten years after losing his last political race, Kerry saw a chance to win elective office. He jumped at an opening for the state’s number two position, lieutenant governor, and won. Although Kerry’s new job had little authority, he used it as a platform for favorite issues, including his call for environmental controls on power plant emissions that caused “acid rain” to fall on Massachusetts. (Kerry served under Michael Dukakis, who in 1988 ran for president against George H. W. Bush, foreshadowing Kerry’s own presidential campaign in 2004 against Bush’s son, George W. Bush.)

In 1984 another political opportunity arose with the retirement of U.S. senator Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts. Nationally, it was a Republican year, with Ronald Reagan overwhelmingly reelected to a second term as president. But Massachusetts was still heavily Democratic. Kerry overcame a tough challenge in the Democratic primary and then easily beat his Republican challenger in the general election, beginning an unbroken string of 20 years in the Senate by the time Kerry ran for president in 2004.

VI.

Senate Years

Kerry arrived in Washington, D.C., in 1985, returning to the forum where he had first come to fame in 1971 as an antiwar leader. Now Kerry was leading the fight against another war: the Reagan administration’s effort to overthrow the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. Kerry flew to Nicaragua and met with the Sandinista leader, Daniel Ortega. Ortega shortly thereafter flew to Moscow, then still the capital of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), to pick up a $200-million loan. The Reagan White House mocked Kerry for dealing with Ortega, calling him a Soviet ally, but Kerry kept a close eye on the Reagan administration’s dealings with the small Central American country.

Soon, Kerry began to hear stories about secret U.S. assistance to a group known as the contras that was trying to overthrow the Sandinista government. Although President Reagan viewed the contras as “freedom fighters,” Kerry called them a “mercenary army” financed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In an echo of his accusations about U.S. actions in Vietnam, Kerry charged that the contras had been “guilty of atrocities against civilians.” Kerry’s investigations helped lead to revelations of what became known as the Iran-contra scandal, in which profits from secret U.S. arms sales to Iran were illegally diverted to help finance the contras.

As a former prosecutor, and with his war experience providing him with a skeptical view of U.S. foreign policies, Kerry became known more as an investigator than a legislator. Kerry’s investigations included an examination of a banking scandal involving the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI), which engaged in fraud and laundered money from illegal drug trafficking. Some of Kerry’s critics charge that his Senate career lacked distinction because of his failure to draft and sponsor the passage of major legislation. But his defenders answer that Kerry was not known for authoring bills because that task was left to his senior colleague, Democratic senator Edward Kennedy. Nevertheless, Kerry did help write and support many key pieces of legislation. Not all of the bills fit the liberal mold that Kerry is known for. Kerry, for instance, joined Republicans in backing a deficit-reduction bill. He was a fierce critic of the abuse of illegal narcotics, working on antidrug issues with some of the most conservative Republicans, including former senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina.

Kerry also earned a reputation as a publicity seeker. He was given the nickname Liveshot for his ability to attract news coverage. But he also won many admirers who believed that Kerry was willing to tackle difficult issues. For example, Kerry worked with Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican and fellow Vietnam veteran, on an investigation into whether American soldiers were still being held in Vietnam. The pair determined there was no proof that Americans were still imprisoned, and they stood by President Bill Clinton’s side in 1995 when the United States announced it was normalizing relations with Vietnam.

Kerry faced one of his most difficult political challenges the following year, when he was opposed for reelection by a popular Republican, Massachusetts governor William Weld. In what has been a pattern of his political career, Kerry came on strong at the end and won the race. He won reelection easily in 2002, enabling him to focus on his longtime goal of the presidency.

VII.

Kerry’s Second Marriage

Kerry’s political success came at a personal cost. In 1982 he separated from his wife, Julia Thorne, and they were divorced in 1988. Kerry was not independently wealthy, and he described himself as financially “tight” at a time when he had many expenses, living in Boston and Washington, D.C., and supporting his two daughters.

In 1990 Kerry’s colleague Senator John Heinz, a Pennsylvania Republican, introduced Kerry to his wife, Teresa. Kerry and Heinz were collaborating on the Clean Air Act, and Teresa was actively involved in promoting the legislation. The next year, John Heinz died in a plane crash. Teresa Heinz inherited a large part of the Heinz family ketchup fortune and became one of the wealthiest women in the United States. She also gained control of several charitable foundations, putting an emphasis on environmental and land-use issues and providing considerable support for institutions in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where her charities were based.

In 1992 Kerry and Teresa Heinz both attended the United Nations-sponsored Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where they met again, and they started dating. The two had many things in common—an international upbringing, a life in Washington—but they did not share political parties. Still, Kerry, the Democrat, and Teresa Heinz, the Republican, fell in love, and they were married on May 26, 1995, on Nantucket, an island off the coast of Massachusetts where Teresa Heinz owned one of her several homes. While initially cool to the idea of her husband running for president, Teresa Heinz Kerry, as she was now known, became increasingly enthusiastic as she considered the potential impact on such issues as the environment. By 2003 she had become one of Kerry’s most important campaign advisers, and she eventually switched parties to join her husband as a Democrat.

VIII.

The 2004 Presidential Campaign

A.

The Battle for the Democratic Nomination

Kerry began his race for the Democratic presidential nomination with some commentators calling him the presumed frontrunner. His opponents included former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who was little-known outside his home state; Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, who had gotten some national exposure when he was considered for the vice presidency in 2000; and House minority leader Richard Gephardt, who had previously failed in a presidential bid. Other candidates included the 2000 vice presidential nominee, U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman; the Reverend Al Sharpton, Jr.; U.S. Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio; U.S. Senator Bob Graham of Florida; and former Illinois senator Carol Moseley Braun.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq soon became a major issue in the Democratic primaries. Kerry, who had voted against authorization for the 1991 Persian Gulf War, voted for a 2002 resolution that in effect gave President George W. Bush the authority to go to war. Kerry said that his vote was an effort to give Bush a show of bipartisan support for getting United Nations (UN) inspectors into Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction. Kerry said in an October 9, 2002, speech on the Senate floor that the “one reason” for his vote was “to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction if we cannot accomplish that objective through new, tough weapons inspections in joint conference with our allies.”

In March 2003 Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq partly on grounds that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was not allowing UN inspectors to do their job (see U.S.-Iraq War). Dean seized on the Iraq issue, questioning why Kerry and some other candidates supported the Iraq war resolution when it was unclear whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. At a Democratic Party rally, Dean said he was there to “represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.”

Dean’s candidacy took off, in part because of his use of the Internet as a fundraising tool. As Dean soared in the polls in June 2003, Kerry’s campaign decided not to spend money on television ads that might have stopped Dean’s rise. The Kerry campaign wanted to save its resources, believing that Dean and Kerry would both be subject to federal spending limits by virtue of accepting matching federal campaign funds. But Dean raised money so successfully on the Internet that he was able to reject federal contributions to his campaign and thus not be subject to any spending limit. Kerry followed suit even though he was behind Dean in fundraising. Kerry also announced that he would loan personal funds to his campaign.

Other candidates also picked up steam. Edwards raised slightly more money during the first quarter of 2003 than Kerry. Then, in September 2003, retired general Wesley Clark entered the race with the help of a team of former aides to President Clinton. Kerry, meanwhile, was having trouble with his message and his campaign. Complaints were aired that his slogans, such as “The Courage to Do What’s Right,” were vague. Some of Kerry’s Boston-based friends, long at odds with Kerry’s Washington-based campaign staff, urged Kerry to fire his campaign manager. Kerry agreed and hired an aide to Senator Kennedy, Mary Beth Cahill, as his new campaign manager in November 2003.

But things still looked glum. One poll released in late November 2003 showed Dean ahead of Kerry by 21 points in New Hampshire, which borders both Massachusetts and Vermont. On December 9, 2003, former vice president Al Gore endorsed Dean. Some Kerry aides wanted to put most of their resources into one last desperate drive in New Hampshire, but a decision was made to forge ahead in Iowa, where Dean also looked strong.

In early January 2004, just before the Iowa caucus, which was to be the first nominating election for the Democratic candidate, Kerry’s strategy and his personal energy finally began to pay off. At the same time, Dean suffered from questions about whether he would be able to defeat President Bush in a general election. Kerry’s popularity increased when he ran an ad touting his Vietnam service. The crowning moment came when James Rassmann, who had not seen Kerry since they served briefly together in Vietnam, showed up at a campaign event and told the crowd that Kerry had pulled him out of a canal under fire and saved his life. Kerry won the Iowa caucus, while Edwards, who had been endorsed by the Des Moines Register, came in second. Dean came in a disappointing third and may have buried his chance for revival when he delivered a speech so boisterous that it became known as the “Dean Scream.”

The following week, Kerry won the New Hampshire primary, and Dean’s candidacy was effectively over. Edwards, meanwhile, briefly challenged Kerry, winning his birth state of South Carolina and putting up stiffer-than-expected opposition elsewhere. The other candidates quickly faded. Then, on March 2, Kerry won nine of ten states, with Vermont going to Dean. The race was over, and Kerry was the presumptive Democratic nominee. In July Kerry selected Edwards as his vice-presidential running mate. The same month the Democratic Party formally selected Kerry as its presidential candidate at its convention in Boston, Massachusetts.

B.

The Battle for the Presidency

Kerry’s popularity in the polls increased following the Democratic Convention but not by as wide a margin as some campaign staffers had hoped. Then in August a group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth began airing a series of TV commercials that claimed Kerry did not deserve the medals he received during the Vietnam War. The group accused Kerry of lying about being under fire when he rescued one of his crewmates. The group was spearheaded by John E. O’Neill, fellow Navy veteran and a Texas lawyer who in 1971 angrily challenged Kerry’s claim that atrocities were committed in Vietnam. Bush’s campaign lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg resigned after admitting that he had given legal advice to the Swift Boat group. Bush denied having ties to the anti-Kerry group and said Kerry “served admirably” in Vietnam. First Lady Laura Bush said she did “not really” think the ads were unfair, noting the many attacks on her husband.

The Kerry campaign decided to focus on key battleground states where polls showed an extremely tight race. Among the key battleground states were Florida, Iowa, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Kerry made little effort in the so-called “red” states that were solidly in Bush’s camp. These included nearly all the states of the Old Confederate South and most of the Great Plains states. Neither did Kerry campaign significantly in the “blue” states where he had overwhelming support.

In late September the first of three presidential debates was held. Most political observers said Kerry clearly won the first debate with a forceful presentation that seemed to catch Bush off-guard and ill-prepared. Entering October, however, the polls continued to show that the presidential race was too close to call. The final two presidential debates in October failed to move the polls in either Bush’s or Kerry’s direction.

Continued attacks by insurgents against U.S. forces in Iraq, the release of a final report by CIA weapons inspector Charles Duelfer which concluded that Iraq had no programs to develop weapons of mass destruction after 1991, the discovery that hundreds of tons of high-powered explosives had fallen into the hands of Iraqi insurgents, and a videotape released by Osama bin Laden, all had no discernible impact on the polls as voters headed to the voting booths on November 2.

C.

The Outcome of the Election

On Election Day, more than 118 million voters, or nearly 60 percent of eligible voters, went to the polls, the highest percentage turnout since 1968. After the votes were tallied, Kerry lost both the popular vote and the electoral college vote. In the popular vote, Bush won more than 60 million votes, or 51 percent, to Kerry’s more than 57 million votes, or 48 percent. Independent Ralph Nader won less than 1 percent, or about 400,000 votes. Nader was not a factor in deciding the outcome of the election in any state and did not win any electoral college votes. Bush won 286 electoral votes to Kerry’s 252, but Kerry actually received 251 electoral votes when the electoral college voted on December 13 after an elector in Minnesota mistakenly cast a ballot for John Edwards.

Kerry won 19 states and the District of Columbia, sweeping the Northeast and the West Coast states of Washington, Oregon, and California, while carrying the Midwestern states of Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. When the election results showed that Bush won Ohio, this key battleground state gave Bush enough electoral college votes to claim victory. According to the National Election Pool (NEP, a survey taken for major news media outlets after people voted), Kerry narrowly won the women’s vote with 51 percent but lost the male vote with only 44 percent. Kerry won the African American vote (88 percent), the Jewish vote (74 percent), the trade union vote (61 percent), the Asian American vote (56 percent), the youth vote, ages 18 to 29 (54 percent), and the Latino vote (53 percent). Kerry won 55 percent of households earning less than $50,000 a year but only 43 percent of households earning more than $50,000 a year.

On the issues, 22 percent of voters polled for the NEP said the issue that mattered the most for them was “moral values,” followed by the economy (20 percent), terrorism (19 percent), and Iraq (15 percent). However, another poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, which phrased its questions in an open-ended way rather than asking people to choose from a predetermined list, found that Iraq was the top issue (27 percent), followed by the economy (14 percent), terrorism (9 percent), and moral values (9 percent).

Political analysts were divided over the reasons for Kerry’s defeat. Some believed that antigay marriage initiatives in 11 states increased the conservative turnout for Bush and explained why so many voters cited “moral values” as the most important issue. Other analysts said the decisive issue was terrorism, noting that 49 percent of voters said they trusted Bush to fight terrorism while only 31 percent trusted Kerry. For voters who thought terrorism was the most important issue, 86 percent voted for Bush. About 55 percent of voters also agreed with Bush’s argument that the war in Iraq was part of the war against terrorism.

Kerry’s campaign staff appeared to have been divided on campaign strategy. Some of his closest aides, particularly those who had worked in former President Bill Clinton’s campaign, argued for his campaign to focus more heavily on the economy, while other aides pushed for him to confront Bush over his alleged mishandling of the war in Iraq and failure to capture Osama bin Laden. Some of the postmortem analysis said Kerry failed to articulate a defining theme to his campaign and convey his character and personality. Many aides said after the campaign that Kerry made a mistake by not responding more quickly and forcefully to the attacks from the Swift Boat veterans group.

After the election, Kerry returned to his duties as a U.S. senator. In January 2007 he announced that he would not seek the Democratic presidential nomination for 2008. Instead, he said he would seek reelection to the U.S. Senate in 2008.