John Kerry can be that kind of leader -- as he's demonstrated in his recent calls for shared sacrifice and national service. "America needs you on the front lines," he recently told graduating seniors at New Orleans' Southern University. "We need you to give some of your time and energy to the great cause of reducing illiteracy, preserving our environment, providing after-school care, helping our seniors live in dignity, building new homes for those who need them -- and in all of this, building a nation that really is one America."

In fact, it was Kerry's ancestor, John Winthrop, who founded Massachusetts and coined the political ideal of a "shining city upon a hill" -- a vision that then became associated with the Kennedys and Camelot. John Kerry could lead us back to that noble ideal for American democracy.

So why then is Kerry still neck-and-neck in the polls with George Bush, whose idea of transformational leadership consists of turning his "base" -- very rich people -- into even richer people?

The problem is that Kerry is still only doling out his vision in drips and dribbles. He has not connected the dots with a bold narrative. He has not yet shown Americans how he will lead the country forward and fulfill the promise the Kennedys made to the nation.

The irony is that the Kerry narrative is one of the great narratives in the history of American politics -- a personal tale that links his life story to the history of our times, to his vision for the renewal of America. For starters, there is the fact that -- unlike so many of those hawkish deferment junkies in the Bush administration -- Kerry actually volunteered to serve his country, inspired in no small part by President Kennedy's call to national duty and his heroic service in World War II aboard PT-109.

Kerry's life shows the courage it takes to get America back on track, and to end our national detour into fear. The courage to stand up for what's right, and speak unpopular truth about what's wrong.

Kerry's political narrative starts on June 5, 1968 -- the night Bobby Kennedy was assassinated: John Kerry is on board the USS Gridley, returning home from Vietnam. He carries with him a dog-eared copy of RFK's political manifesto "To Seek a Newer World." During the last month, Kerry has been using the ship's radio to follow Kennedy's remarkable campaign run. But when he tunes in to hear the results of the California primary, the crackling radio delivers the horrifying news that Bobby has been gunned down -- news that rocks Kerry to his core. "It was strange," he says, "coming home from a place of violence to a place of violence ... a violence that shook our very sense of the order of things."

This was the beginning of his coming of age as a leader, which culminated three years later with his 1971 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. With the help of former RFK speechwriter Adam Walinsky, Kerry crafted a compelling, unflinching speech filled with all the moral clarity, fearlessness and boldness our current times demand. "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" memorably asked Lt. Kerry -- wrenching words just as applicable to today's Iraq as they were to Vietnam in '71.

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