As Campaign Tightens, Kerry Sharpens Message
By Adam Nagourney, New York Times

BARTLETT, N.H., Aug. 7 — Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts had just finished a walking tour through Littleton, a small town near here in the White Mountains, when he paused to take questions from local reporters outside a candy store. There was one subject this day: Howard Dean.

Again and again, Mr. Kerry was asked his views of Dr. Dean. Again and again, Mr. Kerry, who had passed a half-dozen Dean placards on his walk, demurred. When a television reporter taunted Mr. Kerry to at least utter Dr. Dean's name, Mr. Kerry, who is rarely at a loss for words, grinned and pinched his mouth shut.

This is Mr. Kerry's world these days. Three months after many Democrats and Mr. Kerry himself thought he was rolling to the Democratic presidential nomination, he is frequently stuck in the shadow of an opponent who has moved from small-bore annoyance to potential threat. By all appearances, the changed atmosphere in the early battlegrounds of Iowa and New Hampshire has forced Mr. Kerry to recalibrate his approach to the crowded race for the nomination.

By his own account, Mr. Kerry's campaign message — which even some supporters described as toothless and themeless back when the fight seemed simpler — has become sharper, more focused and more compact. A candidate who has a reputation for circular speaking and windy orations is invoking Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Truman ("I'm going to tell the truth and they'll think it's hell."), and sounding campaign notes from John McCain, Paul Wellstone and, well, Dr. Dean.

Mr. Kerry is denouncing corporate chieftains for "looting America," and proclaiming the economy under President Bush the worst since the Great Depression. He is attacking Mr. Bush's credibility and competence on issues as different as tax cuts and the postwar cleanup in Iraq to large and enthusiastic crowds in New Hampshire and Iowa.

"This is the greatest say-one-thing-do-another administration that I've seen in all the time I've been in public life — since Richard Nixon was president of the United States," Mr. Kerry said in Minneapolis.

After what many Democrats, including Dr. Dean, described as vacillation on the subject, Mr. Kerry is now standing by his decision to vote for the war in Iraq, arguing, "I didn't take the easy road, but I took the road that I thought was correct." He is seeking to claim the mantle in 2004 for expanded health care coverage, an idea that was pioneered in this campaign by Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri and Dr. Dean.

He is also following Dr. Dean into the campaign computer age. Last week, he began his own campaign Web log, or blog, to provide a digest of his travels, modeled after the blog Dr. Dean has used with great success to rally supporters and contributors.

And more than ever, Mr. Kerry is invoking his stature as a Vietnam veteran as he challenges the stature of his Democratic opponents — none of whom, he frequently points out, have "worn the uniform of our country" — to withstand a debate with Mr. Bush on national security. When an Iowan asked if he had the fortitude to endure a nasty campaign, Mr. Kerry responded: "Listen, man, I fought in Vietnam and I know how to do mud. I'm ready for them."

Mr. Kerry said any changes in his style and campaign — which he said would become even more vivid as he approaches the official announcement of his candidacy next month — were not in response to the ascendancy of Dr. Dean. Rather, Mr. Kerry said over the roar of a private jet flying him through the Midwest last week, any such changes were testimony of his evolution as a candidate, the natural rhythms of a campaign, and the increasing vigor he has felt in the months since he had cancer surgery.

"Look, I had a prostate operation in February and I'm feeling energized again," he said. "I'm feeling fully healthy and well and energetic and focused. I think there's a greater intensity. I'm stronger, back in full mettle and ready to go."

Whatever the reason, the change is bracing, and suggests that the fall campaign will be lively, if polls continue to show Mr. Kerry and Dr. Dean battling for support in states like this. Speaking to New Hampshire teachers at a resort here, who were upset with Mr. Kerry's support for the Bush administration's education bill, Mr. Kerry offered an attack on Republican senators for resisting increased education spending that would have seemed incendiary even from the mouth of Dr. Dean.

"You've got 52 troglodytes on the other side," Mr. Kerry said of his Republican colleagues, before abruptly stopping himself. "I take that back — I'll take that back. You have 50 people who believe something else on the other side of the aisle."

In an interview this week, Mr. Kerry spelled out some of his differences with Dr. Dean that he said would become clear as the campaign progresses, and he emphasized that he would seek to draw those contrasts more systematically in the fall.

"We have some differences in opinion, obviously, and those will become more clear as we go forward," Mr. Kerry said, picking at a grilled chicken salad and kicking off his shoes as his plane banked through the clouds over Iowa. "I'm not for taxing middle-class Americans and reinstating the marriage penalty and taking away the child care credit and raising the tax burden on people we tried to help — we Democrats. These are people Democrats helped. And I think it would be folly for Democrats to turn around and say, sorry, we didn't mean to help you."

"I think I'm stronger and more capable of protecting the security of our country," Mr. Kerry said. Asked to assess Dr. Dean's position on the war, Mr. Kerry, who has been lambasted by his opponents for appearing to equivocate in his views on Iraq, responded: "I don't know his position. He's all over the place."

For the most part, Mr. Kerry's reception these days has been warm, and he is clearly benefiting from a lowered expectation created by the portrayal of him out of Washington as cool and aloof. As he campaigns, Mr. Kerry is very big on physical contact, throwing his arm over every shoulder he sees, grabbing elbows and hands as he moves in close to ask, "What is your name?" And he has learned the value of telling a joke on himself, which inevitably charms and surprises his audiences.

"He seems to be pretty genuine," Eric Dyer, 21, the president of the Minnesota Student Association at the University of Minnesota said after hearing Mr. Kerry speak in Minneapolis last week. "I was probably going to go for Dean. But I came here and I was impressed."

Mr. Kerry's focus on Dr. Dean reflects the fact that each views the other as his biggest threat in New Hampshire because they live in adjoining states. And if advisers to Mr. Kerry and Dr. Dean agree on anything, it is that they would like to see this sprawling nine-candidate race reduced to a two-way contest.

Which is not to say that Mr. Kerry is ignoring his other opponents. For example, he frequently criticizes those who, like Dr. Dean and Mr. Gephardt, would roll back all of the tax cuts passed under President Bush. Asked if he agreed with the accusation by Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut that Dr. Dean was leading the Democrats into the political wilderness, Mr. Kerry responded: "I'm focused on my message, my campaign. If Lieberman wants to lash out on a political basis, that's his judgment."

There are, inevitably, still signs of the preternaturally cautious front-runner in Mr. Kerry. While Dr. Dean announces, "I want our country back," Mr. Kerry is more apt to explain that he is running because "this is a critical historical moment for our country and we deserve strong leadership that moves the country in the right direction."

And while he regularly invokes his foreign policy experience in the Senate as a contrast to his opponents, his 19 years in the Senate seem an almost incidental part of his candidacy, particularly when compared with his four years in the military. If anything, like the other members of Congress in the race — including Mr. Lieberman and Senator John Edwards of North Carolina — Mr. Kerry seems to struggle with the challenges of trying to run for the White House from the Senate.

"The Senate presents inherent difficulties," he said. That said, Mr. Kerry rejected the notion that any voter would view him as a Washington insider.

"The question is, are you offering a vision of leadership, and do you stop talking Washingtonese," Mr. Kerry said. "And I ain't talking Washingtonese."

As Mr. Kerry was moving through the White Mountains here today, a reporter asked if he was worried that Dr. Dean had been on the cover of Time and Newsweek magazines — a platform Mr. Kerry would presumably have liked to have had.

"Campaigns have cycles," Mr. Kerry responded, "It's early. It's very early."

The senator, who has spent the better part of two years preparing for this, continued: "I haven't even announced yet. We have some time to create some energy here."