Kerry on the Bush Administration's Absence of Leadership

John Kerry spent the day in Massachusetts yesterday, talking to constituents on a variety of issues. In the morning he met a group of North Shore business and political leaders at the Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, MA. Kerry told the group, "There is an absence of leadership that I have never seen. "(There is a) complete and total abdication of responsibility of serious engagement in issues that affect every single one of you here. It is driven by ideology, partisanship."

In an hour long talk ranging on issues from vocational education to the war in Iraq, Kerry "sounded every bit like a man still running for president." Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll, asked the question on everyone's mind: Will you run again in 2008?

"The short answer is, I'm thinking very seriously about it," Kerry said. "I know what it takes. I know how to do it, I know the mistakes we made, and we did make some mistakes."

That — and the rest of Kerry's speech — sounded a lot like a "yes" to many in attendance.

"Whether or not he's made the decision yet, he certainly sounds like a candidate," state Rep. John Keenan, D-Salem, said after the breakfast. "My unofficial estimation is he sounded like somebody who's running."

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