This year is not the first time Kerry's name has been seriously mentioned as a prospective nominee. No, that stretches back to 1971 when, on "60 Minutes," Morely Safer asked Kerry, then 27 and leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, about whether he would want to be president. (Kerry's answer was no.) He's clearly been thinking about it more credibly for quite some time. Just a year ago, his ambitions were mentioned by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who, while commenting on the weak performances of Gore and former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley in the Democratic race, rhetorically asked: "You know the guy with the biggest regrets that he didn't run?"

McCain, a friend of Kerry's, answered himself: "His initials are J.K."

Kerry had briefly flirted with the prospect of challenging Gore for the nomination, but in early 1999 opted out. One year later, Kerry made Gore's short list of potential vice presidential picks, but in the end he came in third, behind Lieberman and Edwards. Kerry, according to sources close to him, never thought Gore was going to pick him. Many of Kerry's supporters -- those who thought Lieberman was too timid as the vice-presidential nominee, too easy on Dick Cheney in the vice presidential debate and too hesitant to step into the attack dog role -- naturally think Gore made the wrong pick. Whether or not you buy that, quite unlike Lieberman, Kerry says that whether or not Gore is running will not be a factor when he makes his decision about 2004.

"Thank you for that extraordinarily generous introduction," Kerry said at one of the New Hampshire fundraisers. "I was tempted to go: 'I accept the nomination!' But I won't." The crowd laughed knowingly.

On the stump, Kerry talks about engaging "a common journey right now" that includes "very significant choices about our country." It sounds a lot more like a Kerry for president speech than a Kerry for Senate speech. "We have to organize around a vision about our country and about our citizenry," he says.

In an interview, Kerry reflects on the speeches he's been giving recently, during stops that have included Georgia, Colorado, Washington, Iowa and Texas. "As I go out and have spoken in the last weeks, last months, I've talked about choices," he says.

"Choices" as exemplified by the Bush tax cut. To a few dozen dairy farmers in Adams, Mass., Kerry talks about the Northeast Dairy Compact in the context of Bush's "irresponsible tax cut so big ... this past month we borrowed to pay for the tax cut." The debate has been "reduced to stupid little phrases, like 'It's not the government's money, it's the people's money!'" Kerry sneers. "Well, that sounds great, folks, but there are some things that only the government can do."

He paints himself as the fiscal conservative, spinning Bush as the radical. Kerry drives into the larger point, saying the $1.35 trillion Bush tax cut deprives the Senate of "opportunities to provide you with a decent price support program." He talks up his support of both the "tough vote" for the 1993 Clinton deficit reduction program as well as "the first thing" he supported as a new senator in 1985, the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit reduction act. But beneath Kerry's talk of "choices" lies a pretty liberal philosophy and a voting record on most things that matches up well with the state's senior senator, Ted Kennedy. Though Kerry has carved out a somewhat unpredictable niche by leaning right on free trade and the deficit, he knows that he, the former lieutenant governor for Gov. Michael Dukakis, will be slammed as just another Massachusetts liberal should the time come. He hopes to avoid that, and the themes he has been sounding -- or at least the ones he's been discussing recently, among certain audiences -- have made a fan out of at least one influential conservative Democrat.

"I've been going to Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinners in Georgia since the 1950s, so I've seen a lot of speeches," says Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga., easily the Senate Democrat most supportive of the Bush agenda. "Kerry's was by far the best speech I have ever heard given at a function like that. He talked about citizen-soldiers and he talked about the flag raisers at Iwo Jima. It was a very good, touching speech."

Back in the 1971 "60 Minutes" profile of Kerry, Safer referred to Kerry's "manner, his credentials, a veteran whose articulate call to reason rather than anarchy seemed to bridge the call between the Abbie Hoffmans of the world and Mr. Agnew's so-called 'Silent Majority.'" Will Kerry be able to bridge the gap between the red and the blue states? Miller has criticized his fellow Democrats (including Al Gore) for not "getting it." I ask Miller: Does Kerry get it?

"I'm not sure," Miller says, allowing that he and Kerry differ on some issues, including the Bush tax cut. The American people will want to see if "he's talking about issues that affect their daily lives" rather than issues of "political correctness or some far-out social issue," Miller says.

"He's a man of great substance and great character, but the cold hard fact is one speech does not make a candidacy in Georgia," Miller says. "But it was certainly an auspicious beginning."

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