Deep shade of bland

ROCHESTER, N.H. -- After the first time I met Richard A. Gephardt at a small lunch a few years ago, I called my editor as fast as my flabby fingers could dial the phone.

"Do anything you want to me," I told her. "Cut my pay. Make me open a Worcester bureau. Force me to spend days with Barney Frank. But don't ever ask me to have lunch with him again."

Don't get me wrong. It's not that Gephardt was a bad guy. Quite the opposite, actually. He was so straightforwardly earnest, so utterly devoid of even the hint of cynicism, that I felt diminished, if not spiritually worthless, in his presence.

You see, Gephardt is from St. Louis. St. Louis is in Missouri. Missouri is in the heartland. And just like Ted Kennedy might personify the wayward Catholic liberalism indigenous to Massachusetts, Gephardt embodies an American way of life that most of modern America will never actually live.

I bring this up as a prelude to telling about Saturday morning, when, despite my every instinct, I found myself sitting aside Gephardt in the back seat of an SUV gliding past skating ponds and snow-covered fields between campaign stops in New Hampshire.

Gephardt, as always, appeared pristine, in a navy blue suit fitted to his muscled frame, a proud blue tie, the pale hue of his perfectly combed hair not much different from that of his unblemished skin. For the moment, I felt oddly self-aware of each one of the roughly 10,000 strands of dog fur that hung from my worn fleece jacket, and wondered, almost aloud, if he thought I needed a haircut. Here we go again.

Earlier that morning, before about 100 people in the basement of a tiny Portsmouth church, he gave a stump speech so animated that the crowd appeared ready to rise up and chant his name. When he referred to his son's life-threatening illness as a baby in a discussion about health care coverage for all, he gripped his chest and said with intensity: "I get this issue. I get it in my heart. There is nothing you can tell me about it."

He pronounced every syllable, struck every good note, and left precisely on time, telling the crowd: "You are the power and majesty of this country. You don't know how good you are."

In the car, he was less animated, though no less resolute. Of Howard Dean, he said: "He's run a very effective campaign. He tapped into all this anger on Bush and frustration over the war. But in the end, people aren't going to vote for the angriest. They want experience."

Of himself, he said: "I'm running on the right issues, for the right reasons. I'm saying what I want to say to people. My message has been clear and consistent. You don't need to poll and focus group it. I've been out there saying these things from the very beginning."

This race is about to tighten. Of that, have no doubt. The month leading to the Iowa caucus is like Sunday afternoon at The Masters: Leaders stumble, challengers rise, momentum shifts. In this case, Dean may have peaked before enough people cared. Reporters are beginning to scrutinize. The public is starting to wonder why he always seems so angry. The question becomes: Did he build a lead so large that it can't be overcome?

Answers are forthcoming. Meantime, Gephardt battles with John Kerry to be first alternate, and in their own distinct ways, both are starting to produce a pretty good show.

Gephardt's main appeal might be the very blandness (he and his wife are named Dick and Jane), the granite values that cynics like myself assumed would be his main obstacle. The world these days seems unstable, the people trying to run it uncertain. George Bush attacked Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction and then changed the rationale when he couldn't find any. Dean says he's proud of his record in Vermont, but fights to conceal his papers as governor.

And there's Gephardt, the same at the beginning as at the end, competent, knowledgeable, and stable. Enough to win? Probably not. But it will prove plenty enough to make things interesting.

Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is mcgrory@globe.com.