Kerry could dramatically improve his fortunes in Florida with a savvy vice-presidential pick. With stories surfacing about the apparently chilly relationship between the two men, the bloom may be off the Kerry-Edwards rose. If Kerry is serious about contending in Florida, he may think long and hard about Sen. Bob Graham, the tremendously popular Floridian who made a brief run at the presidency himself and who has made it clear that he'd accept a spot on the ticket if it is offered.

While a Miami Herald/St. Petersburg Times poll released over the weekend showed that Kerry was doing well enough in Florida that the presence of Graham or junior Sen. Bill Nelson on the ticket wouldn't help him much, not everyone agrees. Dáte, who has just completed a biography of Graham, said that Florida is so important to Kerry that Graham could be a worthwhile addition to the ticket "even if all he does" in the campaign is travel back and forth "from Pensacola to Key West."

Even without Graham, however, Kerry seems to enjoy the enthusiasm edge over Bush in Florida -- at least for now. Kerry is riding the momentum of primary victories around the country; the Bush-Cheney team has just barely cracked open its massive war chest for campaign commercials. Once Karl Rove starts spending the millions he's got in reserve -- and if Ralph Nader's campaign picks up any steam at all -- Kerry could find himself in real trouble in Florida. But still, around the state today, voters appear to feel a sense of ambivalence about the president, and that's got to work in Kerry's favor.

You hear it wherever Floridians gather, even among his supporters. There's a big flea market set up in the parking lot outside a dog track in the Broward County community of Hallandale Beach. On a warm weekday afternoon, hundreds of seniors wander around and pick through the bargains: bottles of knock-off cologne, slightly used golf balls, and a lot of underwear that might be fashionable among women a decade or so beyond a certain age. Perry and Paulyne Golden are making a day of it. He's 80, she's 79.

Although they call themselves "Truman Democrats," the Goldens are the kind of voters who ought to be enthusiastic about George W. Bush. They're military people -- Perry Golden served in World War II, and their son just left the service and took a job with the Department of Homeland Security. Al Gore "nauseated" the Goldens each time they saw him on TV, Paulyne says; he was a "typical free-spending ultra-liberal," Perry says, and he "scared" them. "John Kerry scares us, too," Perry says. Their worry: When Kerry says he'll roll back tax cuts for the wealthy, he just might mean people like them.

The Goldens voted for Bush in 2000. But ask them who will get their votes in 2004, and they hesitate. After a long pause, Perry says: "Bush, reluctantly." The Goldens like the president's tax cuts, and they think he's doing about as well as anybody could on homeland security. But they're unhappy with his hard-right views on issues like abortion, and they wish he presented himself better. "He comes across as a very poor communicator," Perry says. "He's not a Reagan. He's not even a Clinton."

Voters at a local candidates' debate in western Broward County expressed a similar lack of enthusiasm about the president last week. "I like having lower taxes," says Republican Debby Beck, a Parkland City commissioner. Beck voted for Bush in 2000, but like Perry Golden she hesitates when asked how she'll vote this time around. She ultimately says that she'll support the president, but she seems far from enthusiastic. Beck volunteers that she is "disappointed" by Bush's support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. "I think civil unions should be available to people who need that status and the benefits that come with it," she says.

Voters like Beck and the Goldens illustrate a key point about Florida politics; despite the white-hot partisanship of 2000, Florida is a centrist state. Because the state has an unusually diverse group of voting blocs -- Florida includes large populations of Jews, African-Americans, Cubans, Haitian-Americans, military families and retirees, most all of whom have come here from somewhere else -- elections in Florida necessarily turn on the voters in the middle. "We're not ultraconservative or ultraliberal, and what's concerning to both parties is when national leaders get too far on either end of the spectrum," says MacManus, the University of South Florida professor.

That presents problems for both Bush and Kerry. While Bush and Gore both ran as moderates, it will be harder for either of the current candidates to portray themselves as centrists in 2004. The Republicans have already tagged Kerry as a Massachusetts liberal with a voting record to match, and Bush's need to shore up his Christian conservative base makes it hard for him to appeal to more socially moderate voters at the same time.

Christine Hunschofsky, 34, is an independent voter and self-described "soccer mom" from western Broward County, and she underscores the problem Bush faces after swinging so far to the right. Hunschofsky said she could have voted either way in 2000. She ultimately made her decision by tossing a coin, and the winner was Al Gore. This time around, she can't even conceive of voting for Bush.

Candidate Bush appealed to Hunschofsky in 2000 because he surrounded himself with people she trusted, people like Secretary of State Colin Powell. "He sold himself as a manager, someone who would listen to both sides," Hunschofsky said. But President Bush has "frozen out" moderate voices like Powell's, she added. "Bush is a likable guy, but his politics seem so one-sided. There's no way I could vote for him now."

There are surely hundreds of thousands of die-hard Bush supporters throughout Florida today, people who see the president as a God-fearing man of his word who has made the country stronger and safer and put it on a path to economic prosperity. Many of them live in the northern part of Florida -- the part that is, paradoxically, most "Southern" -- a region dominated by military bases, retired military families and the sort of born-again social conservatives who control politics through much of the South.

But even among Florida's most conservative voters, Bush is being subjected to some of the same sort of second-guessing that bedeviled his father. While social conservatives seem mollified now by Bush's signing of the ban on late-term abortions, his recess appointments of right-wing judges and his support for a constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage, fiscal conservatives have raised concerns about the spending increases and deficits created by a Republican president and a Republican Congress.

The tension is apparently getting under the president's skin. According to a recent report in the Hill, Bush lost his composure during a recent telephone conversation when Rep. Tom Feeney, a conservative Republican congressman from central Florida, told the president that he couldn't support his Medicare bill because he came to Washington to cut entitlements, not raise them. According to the Hill, Bush shot back, "Me too, pal," then hung up on Feeney.

It wasn't the first time a Florida-related phone call got Bush's goat; remember the heated exchange that occurred when Gore "un-conceded" the race on that fateful night four years ago and had to tell Bush not to get "snippy" with him. If Kerry and the Democrats have their way, Bush will have one more bad call from Florida eight months from now.

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