Michael Kranish, in the Boston Globe (March 11, 2004):

Steven Michael Gardner served side by side with John Forbes Kerry in Vietnam, was wounded under Kerry's command, and was manning twin .50-caliber machine guns on a night that has forever haunted Kerry -- the night his crew killed a young boy in a sampan.

But unlike many of Kerry's crewmates, Gardner has not appeared at Kerry's side at campaign rallies, and his view of Kerry at war is far different from the heroic view presented by others."He absolutely did not want to engage the enemy when I was with him," Gardner said in a recent interview."He wouldn't go in there and search. That is why I have a negative viewpoint of John Kerry."

Gardner's view is dramatically at odds with that of many other crewmates whom the Globe interviewed, who praise Kerry's leadership and say he was one of the most aggressive skippers in the Navy at the time. Gardner, who said he intends to support President Bush for reelection, clashed with Kerry on one of the most memorable and haunting nights that the two sailors spent together in Vietnam. That story, which until recently has been told publicly only in fragmentary form, involved the killing of the young boy.

As Gardner recalls it, he was in the"tub" above the pilot house with the twin machine guns, and Kerry was in command, when the Navy swift boat came upon a sampan in the darkness. Gardner flashed a searchlight and ordered the craft to stop. Then, he said, he saw a figure rise up over the gunwale with a semiautomatic weapon. Spotting tracers in the sky and fearing an attack, Gardner said, he laced the sampan with bullets, and other crew members fired as well. Gardner recalls a man in the sampan falling overboard, presumably dead.

After the shooting had stopped and Kerry had ordered a cease-fire, Gardner said, the crew found a woman in the sampan who was alive. There was also the boy, dead in the bottom of the boat. Gardner said there is no way to know which crewmate fired the shots that killed the boy, but he said Kerry was in the pilot house and did not fire. Kerry was livid when he emerged, Gardner said.

"Kerry threatened me with a court-martial, screaming at the top of his lungs: `What the hell do you think you're doing? I ought to have you court-martialed,'" Gardner recalled."Thankfully, the whole crew was there in the middle of it . . . they verified there were weapons being shot at us. That was the end of it." ...

Daniel Henninger, in the WSJ (March 12, 2004):

John Kerry entered the U.S. Senate in 1985, and for 18 years built the record that is now the basis for calling him either complex and nuanced or inconsistent and opportunistic. Most famously, Mr. Kerry voted for the Iraq war resolution, but criticizes nearly every action Mr. Bush has taken on Iraq. He voted for the Patriot Act but says John Ashcroft is"abusing" it. There is a long list of similarly nuanced positions (a word Mr. Kerry rejects).

Here is a Harry Truman story from Alan Axelrod's book on Truman's leadership style. Speaking at Columbia University in 1959, a student challenged the 33rd President, a Democrat, on dropping the second A-bomb."The reason I asked this," the student said,"was that it seemed to me the second bomb came pretty soon after the first one." After speaking testily of"Monday morning quarterbacks," Truman said simply:"I was there. I did it. I would do it again."

This isn't John Kerry. Indeed, it is unlikely that Harry Truman's blunt, almost cocky retort would be seen as admirable by current standards of public sensitivity. But the stubborn forcefulness of Truman's decision-making still stands as a symbol of presidential leadership, as does that of FDR, Lincoln and increasingly Ronald Reagan, who installed Pershing missiles in Europe against opposition similar to that faced now by Mr. Bush on Iraq. Roosevelt pressed the Lend Lease Act against an embittered domestic opposition.

This is a guess, as inevitably one has to guess about a presidential challenger, but John Kerry's temperament, as we have seen it, appears unlikely to have let him make Truman's decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He would have found the implications of that decision too difficult to bear the heavy judgments of history, then or now.

Iraq aside, one must doubt that Mr. Kerry would have attacked the Taliban in Afghanistan on the scale and with the ferociousness of Mr. Bush's successful assault. After September 11, both conservatives and liberals opposed retaliation against al Qaeda's redoubts in Afghanistan, describing many scenarios of political and geographic disaster. It is reasonable to guess that a President Kerry would have sided with those articulating arguments against.

Across the years, Mr. Kerry has been Hamlet, a political metaphor sure to rise again and again until November. This is one ghost that can't be mocked offstage. It needs to be faced. Vietnam haunted him, then and now. By his friends' accounts, he wrestles in his maturity with the decisions of life and politics.

Hamlet is very much a man for our times. Perhaps the presidency deserves one version of Everyman in the complex and inconstant world we inhabit. I doubt it. The historian James McGregor Burns said a few years back that often now politicians"don't have firm sets of ideals or values, either liberal or conservative or radical, that can underpin strong leadership." Some truths don't change. It is very hard to see John Kerry as the right fit for the office of the American presidency....

Eric Black, in the Star Tribune (March 11, 2004):

Twenty years ago this summer, Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale chose Rep. Geraldine Ferraro of New York as his running mate, which made her the first woman ever on a major party ticket.

At a reunion Wednesday morning, Mondale and Ferraro reminisced about their history-making 1984 partnership, then joined several analysts of gender politics in pondering why no women have been on a major presidential ticket since Ferraro broke the barrier.

Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who got her first big break on the 1984 campaign, showed data suggesting that gender stereotypes still play a significant role in voters' choices. For example, only 46 percent of Americans described themselves as"very comfortable" with the idea of a woman president.

Although a couple of women have been mentioned as possible running mates for this year's presumptive Democratic nominee, Sen. John Kerry, the most prominently mentioned names are men. If Kerry picks a man and President Bush sticks with Vice President Dick Cheney, as he has said he will, that will make 20 males who have run for president or vice president on the major party tickets since Ferraro's breakthrough nomination.

Kenneth S. Baer, author of Reinventing Democrats: The Politics of Liberalism from Reagan to Clinton and a speechwriter for Al Gore; in Newsday (New York) (March 7, 2004)

Listening to Republicans crow over the past few weeks, you would have thought that the 1990s never happened.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour called the presumptive Democratic nominee a"taller, leaner version of Ted Kennedy." Pat Buchanan charged that he was a"Massachusetts liberal," and GOP strategist Greg Mueller gleefully called Sen. John Kerry a"New England Dukakis liberal."

The election and re-election of Bill Clinton, plus the near-election of Al Gore, were supposed to have put this kind of liberal-bashing to rest. Clinton was the New Democrat from Arkansas who dislodged a party mired in American politics' left bank and guided it into the mainstream. In victory, Democrats were to have learned their lesson, never again to nominate a Northeastern liberal, especially one who lived a stone's throw from the ivy-covered walls of Harvard.

Yet last week, Democrats seemed to have reverted to form, selecting Michael Dukakis' fellow Bay Stater and one-time lieutenant governor to be the party's standard-bearer this fall.

Republicans may be ecstatic, but to honestly believe that Kerry is a Dukakis throwback is to believe that Cabbage Patch Kids, acid-washed jeans and MC Hammer are on the cusp of a revival.

The Democratic Party of 2004 is not the Democratic Party of 1988 - or 1968. The party has been profoundly changed by Bill Clinton's candidacies and presidency, and this transformation is clearly reflected in the Democrats' new leader...

...By 1984, according to the National Election Studies, Americans viewed the Democratic Party as representing black militants, the women's liberation movement, civil rights leaders, welfare recipients, gays and lesbians and labor unions. On a favorability scale of zero to 100, this coalition scored an average of 45.

These are the bogeymen that Republicans like to conjure up come election time, but they are the ghosts of the Democratic Party past.

In the 1990s, Clinton and the New Democrats fashioned a post-Cold War foreign policy predicated on America's engagement with the world and the promotion of democracy abroad. As demonstrated in the Balkans, they readily used military force to further American interests and values. On the domestic front, they proved that Democrats once again could manage the economy as Clinton opened markets abroad, expanded economic opportunity and oversaw the longest period of economic growth in U.S. history.

Countering the belief that the Democrats were the party of tax-and-spend, Clinton ran a record budget surplus and cut the federal government to its smallest size since John Kennedy was in office. By ending welfare, promoting national service and putting more cops on the beat, Clinton rebalanced the party's emphasis on rights and responsibilities. On social issues, Democrats remained committed to inclusion and tolerance, and shed their aversion to faith and family.

Make no mistake: Changing a party's public philosophy is like steering an aircraft carrier. It took New Right conservatives 16 years from Barry Goldwater's defeat to Ronald Reagan's victory. And despite all Clinton did to debunk Democratic stereotypes on national security, the mishandling of the 2002 campaign and Bush's post-Sept. 11 leadership reasserted the Democratic disadvantage on this issue with a vengeance. Yet, policy and political success breeds imitation and slow but steady change.

Look at the results of this year's presidential nominating race. The candidate of the labor left (Richard Gephardt) and the candidate of the liberal left (Howard Dean) both lost decisively. The black protest candidate (Al Sharpton) barely made a dent with his own constituency, and the candidate who ran on a platform of pure early-'70s liberalism (Dennis Kucinich) won nothing outside of Maui.

Both of the two finalists in the nominating race - Kerry and John Edwards - supported the war in Iraq, backed middle-class tax cuts, offered affordable and market-oriented health-care plans, championed fiscal discipline and promoted national service on the stump. When Edwards veered left by staking out a protectionist stance on trade, he not only failed to win industrial states, but was forced to concede the nomination after being shut out on Super Tuesday.

Does that make the candidate left-standing, Kerry, a New Democrat? Not necessarily. Kerry was not at the vanguard of the New Democratic movement in the 1980s, and hailing from Massachusetts - as opposed to Georgia or Oklahoma - he didn't need to be. Like most of the pre-Clinton party, Kerry was certainly more liberal Democrat than New Democrat, yet he wasn't leading the resistance either.

Since then, like the bulk of the party, Kerry has made his peace with key New Democratic policies and is far from the McGovernik Massachusetts liberal that Republicans relish running against.

During the Clinton years, Kerry sided with the president on the two most internally divisive issues the party faced, welfare reform and trade. And during his own presidential campaign, Kerry has focused his pitch on his military experience and belief in a muscular, Kennedyesque (John, not Ted) liberal internationalism. Even in the darkest days of his candidacy, Kerry told anti-war crowds that Democrats had to be strong on defense and refused to pander to labor crowds by telling them that he could bring back lost manufacturing jobs.

Of course, Kerry has a long record in public life, and Republicans surely will pick it over to paint him as a liberal (at best) or a flip-flopper (at worst) - charges that Kerry will have to forcefully rebut. But, in the end, Kerry represents the mainstream of today's Democratic Party, and while neither he nor the party may proudly take up the New Democratic label, both have been shaped by the Clinton presidency and the New Democratic project - and are better off for it.

Jagdish Bhagwati, writing for the Guardian (London) (March 8, 2004)

A free trader's work is never done, especially in the United States. The historians of free trade in Great Britain since the repeal of the corn laws in mid-19th century have argued that politicians in strong economies embrace free trade because they expect their countries to win in the Darwinian struggle in the marketplace. But the US, despite having emerged at the end of the second world war as the top dog on the block, has repeatedly descended into paranoia on trade.

The recent furore over outsourcing fits into a pattern of fear of trade with the developing countries that goes back to the fierce fights against Nafta with Mexico, and the furore over the imports of labour-intensive goods from the Far East and then China (the"yellow peril"). Now we have the outcry over the imports of (mostly) labour-intensive services online - what economists sometimes call"long distance" services where the provider and the user do not have to get together physically - from India (the"brown peril"). As always, the fear is baseless and based on bad economics.

The earlier fear was that manufacturing jobs for the working class would disappear with imports; vice-president Fritz Mondale conjured up a nation of"hamburger flippers". Now the fear is that the new imports will take good jobs from the middle class, and the modern-day doomsayers imagine a nation of"grocery baggers" at the supermarkets as discharged computer programmers et al struggle for survival at low wages in lower occupations. The fear is not just exaggerated, it is also false; though, as the Russian proverb goes, it has big eyes, and a recent poll suggests that more than a third of the American labour force is in a state of anxiety over jobs.

The difficult job situation in skilled information technology-related occupations has been heavily overlaid by the dotcom bust and by the overvaluation of the dollar, both pheonomena which are being reversed. In fact, according to the bureau of labour statistics, jobs in the very recent years for IT-related occupations have risen, admittedly slowly, but they have not fallen.

Moreover IT, like so much other technology but even more so, displaces unskilled workers and hence low-paying jobs; but it creates demands to maintain and support the technology, which implies new, higher-paying jobs. Vast numbers of jobs to support and service hardware (say, PCs), to maintain the software and to manage the ever-growing new variants and applications, have emerged and will grow rapidly through the next 10 years, as the BLS projections also underline quantitatively.

Furthermore, many services cannot simply be provided on the wire. In particular, as the US population ages and the IT revolution gathers speed and enters senior citizens' lives, many will need not a voice from Bangalore telling them in incomprehensible technical language what to do but a technician who will come and do it for them.

These optimistic assessments are clouded in the public domain by a delusion fostered by mindless commentary in the media. That is illustrated by the astonishing Lou Dobbs show on CNN which daily lists the firms that have outsourced jobs. Mr Dobbs forgets that he should also list the jobs that come in, not just those that go out.

The clinching argument against interfering with outsourcing through protectionism or its variants such as tax deterrents or opprobrium is provided by the fact that the US is closely integrated in the world economy.

In a world that is characterised by intense competition today, small cost disadvantages can spell the demise of a firm: hence all the clamour about"unfair trade" by your rivals on the flimsiest grounds.

If US firms lose out to UK firms because the British government is not joining the protectionist chorus, then they could fold, making the job loss, and hence the worker adjustment required, manifoldly greater. An analogy, not recommended for use by politicians, is that of triage: a lifeboat with a hundred people on board will sink and drown the hundred; but if 10 are thrown overboard 90 will survive.

So the fears over the job adjustment required thanks to online imports of services are unwarranted. And if they are succumbed to they will themselves create serious adjustment problems in their wake.

Will the US ever learn?

Robert J. Samuelson, in Wash Post (March 5, 2004):

One great project of the late 20th century was the construction of vast welfare states in wealthy nations to protect people against the insecurities of the business cycle and the injustices of unfettered capitalism. One great question of the early 21st century is whether these welfare states, facing massive commitments to aging populations, will themselves create new insecurities and injustices. Comes now economic historian Peter Lindert, who has thoroughly probed the welfare state, with a surprising message: Relax.

In an important new book ("Growing Public: Social Spending and Economic Growth Since the Eighteenth Century"), Lindert finds the welfare state to be a resilient institution. He acknowledges the conflict. The elderly (those over 65) are expected to reach 20 percent of the population in 2008 for Japan and Italy, in 2015 for Sweden, and in 2020 for Germany and Belgium (the United States will then be at about 16 percent). But Lindert thinks governments will dodge crises by a pragmatic mix of benefits cuts and tax increases.

Will it be that easy? Last week Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan provoked howls by suggesting cuts in Social Security benefits for future retirees. The reaction to Greenspan's comments highlights the danger of a vicious circle: Politicians can't cut popular benefits. Rising taxes or budget deficits then reduce economic growth -- making benefits harder to pay. The welfare state becomes unaffordable. It promotes economic stagnation and generational and class competition for dwindling benefits.

After an exhaustive analysis, Lindert -- who teaches at the University of California at Davis -- is less alarmed. So far, the welfare state is a "free lunch," he concludes. That is, high taxes and benefits (for unemployment, health and retirement) haven't depressed economic growth. Countries can be caring without crippling themselves. How can this be when economic theory and common sense suggest that heavy taxes and benefits should hurt work and investment?

Lindert offers three answers. First, some public spending (say, on schools) may improve economic growth. Second, generous benefits may reward -- and raise -- unemployment, but the added jobless are mostly unskilled; their loss doesn't hurt much. And, finally, countries with big welfare states have adopted taxes that minimize economic damage. In Europe, taxes approach 50 percent of national income (as opposed to about 30 percent in the United States). But Europe relies heavily on a sales tax -- the "value-added tax" -- that, in theory, falls on consumption and not investment or work effort.

America's desire for welfare (called "poor relief" before the 20th century) was always less than Europe's, Lindert says. The frontier spirit emphasized self-reliance; ethnic diversity discouraged helping dissimilar groups. Even so, welfare in the 1800s was usually below 1 percent of national income everywhere. The poor were stigmatized as failures. The Depression and World War II were transforming, says Lindert. People identified with others' misfortunes -- "that could be me" -- and yearned for collective security.

Up to a point, Lindert's story is a cautionary tale for both liberals and conservatives. For conservatives: There's no automatic connection between bigger government and lower economic growth; sensible societies can deliver both good growth and social justice. For liberals: It matters how societies pay for welfare programs; "soak the rich" taxes can be self-defeating by discouraging investment and risk taking. If citizens want more collective benefits (say, health insurance), they need to pay for them collectively. But Lindert's larger conclusion, that the welfare state has only been a free lunch, strains belief.

In 2003 the average U.S. income per person was $34,831, report economists Robert H. McGuckin and Bart van Ark of the Conference Board. In Germany the average income was $25,507. Lower productivity (output per hour) doesn't explain the difference. It was about equal in both countries. The gap has two causes -- German workers spend less time working, and proportionately fewer Germans work. Why? One reason may be a greater cultural desire for more vacations and free time. But higher taxes also make work less rewarding, while higher welfare makes unemployment more rewarding.

Ross H. Garber, counsel to the office of the governor of Connecticut, in the Hartford Currant (March 7, 2004):

The legislature's Select Committee of Inquiry bears a weighty and historic constitutional responsibility. No governor or any other official has ever been impeached in Connecticut. Indeed, impeachment of a sitting governor is an extraordinarily rare event in U.S. history - only one governor has been impeached in this country in the past 70 years.

Impeachment is employed so rarely because it represents the gravest possible step for the legislature. In fact, impeachment in Connecticut is more serious than in other jurisdictions, because in Connecticut the governor is temporarily removed from office if he is impeached. He returns only if and when the Senate acquits him.

Thus, in Connecticut, impeachment vetoes a democratic election and severely disrupts the ordinary balance between the branches of government. Because impeachment exacts such a heavy toll - on the state, on the public and on the Connecticut Constitution - it must not be used except when absolutely necessary. As the committee undertakes its investigation, it should recognize what scholars have concluded and history has confirmed: Only serious criminal wrongdoing or similarly egregious misconduct related to the governor's official duties justifies impeachment.

History reveals a clear trend toward reserving impeachment for situations presenting clear proof of the most serious misconduct. In the only gubernatorial impeachment in the past 70 years, as in all federal impeachments during this period, there were allegations of serious criminal wrongdoing. Most modern impeachment proceedings began only after the official was formally charged with a crime; not one was based solely on allegations of dishonesty or ethical misconduct.

Nowhere is this pattern clearer than in prior impeachments of state governors. In the most recent example, 16 years ago, the Arizona Legislature began impeachment proceedings against Gov. Evan Mecham only after a grand jury indicted him. In fact, putting aside a few impeachments spawned by partisan politics or extraordinarily tumultuous times, no governor in the 20th century has been impeached except after criminal indictment.

The two modern experiences with presidential impeachment also confirm this principle. The impeachment proceedings against both President Nixon and President Clinton were based on allegations of criminal wrongdoing. Moreover, even though the House found that President Clinton had committed crimes, the Senate refused to remove him from office because, according to several senators, the criminal allegations, even if true, did not rise to the high threshold required for impeachment.

History further demonstrates that impeachment should not occur unless the legislature is certain that the charges are actually true. A relatively high standard of proof, namely" clear and convincing evidence," serves that purpose. That standard of proof was used in the Arizona Senate trial of Gov. Mecham. It also guided the U.S. House of Representatives in weighing the impeachment of President Nixon, and it was cited by several senators in the Clinton proceedings.

There are good reasons for refusing to impeach an elected official except on clear and convincing proof of the gravest wrongdoing. Our Constitution creates a system in which the governor is elected every four years and serves out his term regardless of his popularity or the public's confidence in his ability to lead. Connecticut, like the rest of the United States, rejected the British model of government, which allows the parliament to eject a chief executive on a"vote of no confidence." We intentionally have no California-style recall provision. In our system, a governor may not be tossed from office because of sagging polls or even because the public no longer regards him as trustworthy.

Howard Fineman, in Newsweek (March 5, 2004):

It was Henry Ford who said “history is bunk” as he was busy reinventing American industry a century ago. Well, Ford is the man to see about this presidential campaign. So far, patterns of the past haven't predicted a thing, and it's going to remain that way right up to Election Day. For, based on history, neither George W. Bush nor John F. Kerry has a chance.

  Let's look at the patterns that have been shattered already, in the nominating season just ended. In modern times — since the advent of contested primaries — the major parties always had nominated the guy who collected the most cash and who led in the Gallup Poll by the end of the year before the voting began.

  This time around, of course, that guy was the unstoppable Gov. Howard Dean. He had raised an unheard of $40 million and led in all the national polls — not to mention the local polls in key “early” states, such as Iowa and New Hampshire.

  Poof! He was gone, with a triumphant John Kerry standing in his place.

Second Pattern Shattered

  Kerry's rise shattered the second pattern: that the Iowa caucuses aren't that important or predictive. Winners there — people such as George H.W. Bush in 1980, Dick Gephardt and Bob Dole in 1988 — tended, on balance, not to go on to win the nomination. This time, in retrospect, it is clear that Iowa was the ballgame. Kerry and his strategists bet it all on Iowa, and they were right.

  Pattern No. 3, a corollary of No. 2, was the Inevitable Late Challenger. Especially in the Democratic nominating race, the historians pointed out, someone always arises late in the game to challenge the front-runner. It's the way the primary rules are set up, we were told. Past examples: Jerry Brown in 1976, Gary Hart hanging on to score some late victories in 1984, Bill Bradley in 2000.

  It didn't really happen this time. Sen. John Edwards inherited the role of Late Challenger, but it was too late, and he had no staying power, and he was out by the close of business on Super Tuesday. No Brown, no Hart, no Bradley.

  So what are the historical “rules” waiting to be ignored in the general election now begun?

  One of them is that the Democrats can't win unless a Southerner tops the ticket, and/or unless that ticket can win at least five Southern and border states.

  Kerry himself scoffs at this notion. He thinks he can win in November without a single Southern state. But look at the pattern and you will see it: the shared regional roots and risings of Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Even with the advent of Republican power in the South, the Democrats can't afford to concede it, or so history would seem to say. The last Northern Democrat to win the presidency was John F. Kennedy in 1960 — and even he, in the days before the solid GOP South, won six Southern states.

  History lesson No 2: Governors, not members of Congress, get elected. The last sitting senator to win the presidency was, again, Kennedy, and he was a rarity. In recent years, a roster of senators and former senators — George McGovern, Bob Dole, Al Gore — ran and lost. Dole even quit the Senate, to no avail.

  With no Southern base, a New Englander by birth and breeding, a sitting senator of 20 years standing, Kerry — based on history — would seem to have no chance.

  Except that he does, of course — if for no other reason than the history, in some ways, is against Bush.

The 50 Percent Approval Factor

  General Election Rule No. 2: Incumbent presidents lose if their job-performance numbers dip below 50 percent as the campaign season begins. Bush's is hovering at that level, depending on which polling survey you watch.

  The corollary: No incumbent president can win re-election if the Dow Jones and the employment numbers are lower than they were when he was sworn in. In terms of job losses, Bush is in a category so far occupied by only one other GOP incumbent: Herbert Hoover, and we all know what happened to him. The economy is picking up, but there still is no surge in hiring. It's highly doubtful that, at least in terms of hourly payroll, there will be more people working in the fall of 2004 than there were in January of 2001. Will bragging about the “right direction” of the economy be enough? We'll see.

  One way or the other, history is going to be bunk — again.

Jamie Reno , Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas; With T. Trent Gegax, in Newsweek (March 8, 2004):

The swift boats, like the one John Kerry captained, were sitting ducks. Hiding in the dense jungle along the riverbanks of the Mekong Delta, the Viet Cong could open up on the Americans with machine guns, mortars and rockets--and vanish before the Americans could effectively shoot back. So the U.S. military adjusted, dropping tons of herbicide on the foliage to strip the enemy of its cover. "They just told us they sprayed something to kill the bushes," recalls Mike Medeiros, who served with Kerry aboard PCF (Patrol Craft Fast) 94 in the winter of 1969. "It looked like a moonscape... You saw skeletal remains of trees everywhere. It was like, whatever they're using is some serious stuff."

Some of Kerry's men, contacted last week by NEWSWEEK, don't recall being directly sprayed, or saw planes or choppers dropping the herbicides in the distance. Other Swift Boat crews patrolling near Kerry's boat say they were doused. But everyone, including Kerry, realizes today that they fought in a highly toxic environment. "We know they used defoliants, at least I knew they used defoliants, because it was all around us," says Kerry. "We'd often see the C-130s flying over us--they'd come down along the river and drop this stuff on us," recalls Wade Sanders, who served with Kerry in the delta, on different boats but sometimes on the same patrols along the Cambodian border. "The wind would carry the mist right onto us. But they didn't tell us what it was. We thought it was mosquito spray." The "stuff" was Agent Orange, which, over time, can be lethal to humans as well as to most other living things. "We used to bathe in those rivers and swim in the water to cool off," says Sanders. "Agent Orange was everywhere, all around us, but no one ever told us not to go in the water." Over the years, says Sanders, he and Kerry "have had many discussions about our exposure to Agent Orange."

In his first public comments about his experience with Agent Orange, Kerry told NEWSWEEK, "I don't think I saw as much as he [Sanders] did, but I saw some of it, and I know we were in the water... That was just the nature of life on a boat down there. It was a reality." But, Kerry said, "I've never really thought about it... I don't think about it in a personal sense."

Agent Orange was one of the many tragedies of Vietnam . It may have killed or sickened, via long-incubating cancers and nerve disorders, thousands of American soldiers and sailors (not to mention many more Vietnamese). The government, which once avidly drenched the delta with the poison, has awakened to its dangers. "The environmental hazard of the battlefield--that could be equally as deadly as a bullet wound," said Anthony J. Principi, secretary of Veterans Affairs last year. "We learned that the hard way after Vietnam with Agent Orange." Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, the charismatic Navy commander who ordered the spraying of the Mekong Delta, became a crusader for vets suffering from diseases related to Agent Orange. When Zumwalt's son--like John Kerry, a Swift Boat captain--died of lymphoma in 1988 at the age of 42, Adm. Zumwalt came to blame his son's death on the Agent Orange campaign he had commanded. Kerry, who always preferred action over personal revelation, has dealt with the tragedy his own way. Kerry's health could become a political football (though it's worth remembering that Dick Cheney's heart condition raises questions about the Republican ticket). Ever the stoic, often a loner, Kerry is likely to tough it out. In his interview with NEWSWEEK, his tone was calm, unperturbed.

As a U.S. senator, Kerry has fought for years to help fellow veterans suffering from cancer, nerve and skin disorders and other diseases linked by medical science to chemical dioxins contained in Agent Orange. He was a chief sponsor of the 1991 legislation that now affords some 10,000 exposed veterans up to $2,300 a month for various disabilities. Kerry recently tried unsuccessfully to help Tommy (Trees) Forrest, who served on different boats but in the same combat area, to win benefits for cancers growing on his liver. "I personally observed the spraying of Agent Orange," Kerry wrote in a letter to Veterans Affairs on June 25, 2003 . "I hereby testify with absolute certainty that Thomas G. Forrest and anyone else in that area of operations were definitely exposed to Agent Orange." On the same day, he wrote the same testimonial for one of his closest friends, Giles Whitcomb, a Naval Intelligence officer who served with Kerry in the delta and died last year of lymphoma.

Kerry himself was successfully operated on last year to have his cancerous prostate removed. Did Agent Orange put him at risk? Is he still at risk because of his exposure to the toxic chemical? "I presumed and I still presume, it is my belief that my particular cancer was hereditary and part of my genes," Kerry told NEWSWEEK. "It's gone now. I'm in perfect health, and I'm not concerned about something." Kerry's father died of prostate cancer at the age of 85, and doctors often look first at hereditary factors to predict a patient's risk. About one in six American men gets prostate cancer; roughly a quarter of them between the ages of 55 and 64 (Kerry is 60). The survival rate for those, like Kerry, whose cancer is caught early and undergo surgery is very high.

Still, prostate cancer is one of roughly a dozen diseases that the VA now considers "presumptive" evidence of exposure to Agent Orange. In 1996, the VA began compensating any vet diagnosed with prostate cancer on the ground that it may have been caused by Agent Orange. According to the VA, Kerry himself is entitled to receive Agent Orange benefits, but the wealthy Kerry has not asked for them.

It is impossible to judge the health risks to Kerry or any other veteran, says Dr. David Tollerud, who has overseen several government-sponsored studies on the health effects of Agent Orange, without knowing how often they were exposed, and how directly. A team of researchers at Columbia University has developed a computer model that can be used with detailed military records to assess precise exposure levels. To prepare such an assessment for Kerry, "we'd need the daily log of his Swift Boat," says Jeanne Stellman, a Columbia public-health professor who is overseeing the study. It is significant, she says, that Kerry was in the Mekong Delta, "the most heavily sprayed area in Vietnam , particularly in 1968 and 1969." On the other hand, Spellman cautions, from a purely statistical viewpoint, Kerry stands a greater risk of getting assassinated than getting cancer as a result of his exposure to Agent Orange.

The evidence on the level of Kerry's exposure is unclear. Jim Wasser, Kerry's second in command aboard PCF-44, recalls seeing Agent Orange clouds in the distance, not raining down directly. "But air currents took it a long ways," he says. Medeiros, who served with Kerry on a different boat, PCF-94, doesn't recall seeing any spray. (Both Wasser and Medeiros are healthy; "I look at every day as a bonus," says Wasser.) Forrest, who was on boats patrolling the same rivers as Kerry (including PCF-98, the same boat as Wade Sanders), recalls, "They'd fly overhead and release it in a mist. The bad thing about it was we got fish off the Vietnamese. We'd pick up wood and barbecue and that stuff was coated with Agent Orange. We'd bathe in the water, and Agent Orange dioxins aren't soluble." Kerry recalled to NEWSWEEK, "I'm not sure that I remember a specific incident of being doused, but I do remember that's what they were doing."

Some who have spent time with Kerry believe that he is haunted by the subject of Agent Orange. Historian Douglas Brinkley remembers getting a phone call from Kerry last December after the senator had just finished reading the galleys of Brinkley's new book, "Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War." One of Kerry's only criticisms, recalls Brinkley, was that "I didn't write enough about Agent Orange... He was obsessed with Agent Orange." Brinkley speculates that Kerry has been affected by the tales of woe from delta vets who are just starting to feel the sometimes delayed impact of Agent Orange. He was particularly moved by the recent death of his buddy Giles Whitcomb, a Harvard grad whom Kerry befriended in training and stayed close to all the way through the war (they even double-dated). "The devastating effects of Agent Orange are just coming to fruition. When John talks about these veterans, I think it's visceral," says Brinkley. "There's something going on there, and it may underneath it all be personal--like, 'I may have been doused, too'."

Kerry denies that he broods at all over Agent Orange. He has not released his medical records, but he promised to release a summary: "I'd be happy to have my doctor release something... I just had a checkup about three weeks ago. My blood is perfect. My EKG was perfect."