4 potential running mate picks hit trail with Kerry

NEW ORLEANS -- Max Cleland was the most ferocious. John Edwards, with a tan that only enhanced his telegenic good looks, sounded the most silky smooth -- if oddly subdued. Bob Graham and Bill Nelson drew laughter and applause from voters but did not rouse them to their feet.

In recent days, the Democratic ''veepstakes" -- that shadowy process by which Senator John F. Kerry is sizing up possible running mates -- took on a decidedly public cast this week as those four southern politicians (all senators save Cleland, a former senator from Georgia) spoke at campaign events and Kerry fund-raisers alongside the prospective presidential nominee.

The four men are routinely mentioned as vice presidential material by Kerry aides. Yet just how well they and other prospects suit Kerry, in fit and look and style and wear, is still emerging. The running mate pick is expected sometime between May and July, but the selection process has been so secretive that even some campaign advisers say it would be folly to try to precisely predict the timing.

That secretiveness was one reason why the sight of Kerry with Cleland, Edwards, Graham, and Nelson -- as well as with Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana yesterday and 2000 vice presidential nominee Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut on Sunday and Monday -- offered an unusual peek into the body language, cadences, and, most of all, compatibility that help make the perfect fit that Kerry's team seeks.

Cleland, a Vietnam veteran and triple amputee, whose wartime injuries add authenticity when he describes Kerry's decorated service record in Vietnam, is usually one of the loosest and punchiest of the politicians who are close to Kerry. His remarks at a campaign fund-raiser in Atlanta on Monday night were no exception.

''We bled and almost died on the same battlefield in the war of our generation," Cleland said of Kerry, whom he calls a ''brother." Then, training verbal fire on Republicans in the Pentagon and the White House today, Cleland said of the Iraq war: ''I didn't see a lot of people [in Vietnam] who planned this war. I didn't see Paul Wolfowitz there, I didn't see Donald Rumsfeld there, I didn't see Dick Cheney there, and I didn't see George Bush there."

''If you don't go to war, don't throw rocks at those who do," Cleland added, making an implicit contrast between Kerry's record in Vietnam and that of Republicans who question Kerry's national security views. (President Bush served stateside in the National Guard during the war.)

Edwards, who vied with Kerry for the party's 2004 nomination, was less pugilistic than Cleland when the North Carolinan appeared beside Kerry on Tuesday night at two south Florida fund-raisers. His performance was of a piece with the mostly positive primary campaign he ran -- yet he also showed less of the charismatic energy that marked his candidacy and raised concerns among some Democrats that as a running mate, Edwards's sparkle would upstage Kerry.

He has only just begun appearing with Kerry in public, but Edwards already appeared expert Tuesday night at heaping all the compliments on the senator that the campaign prizes. He credited Kerry with ''putting his own life on the line in Vietnam" and used words like ''strength, integrity, character" to describe Kerry. Edwards even opened with a variation of a laugh line that Kerry sometimes delivers, describing him this way:

''Somebody who is smart, strong, a person of great integrity and character, somebody that all of us and people all across America will be proud to have in the White House -- and I'm not talking about John Kerry, I'm talking about Teresa Heinz Kerry," Edwards said of Kerry's wife; Kerry frequently describes his spouse as more popular than he is.

Graham and Nelson, the two senators from Florida -- a crucial battleground state -- were politely received by their home-state audiences Tuesday. But it was the sunburn on Graham's face and the singing skills of Nelson's daughter -- who sang ''God Bless America" at a Tampa fund-raiser -- that drew a good deal of notice from voters as well as quips from Kerry, not their mostly familiar criticisms of Bush.

Mark Gearan, who advised presidential nominees Michael S. Dukakis and Bill Clinton and assisted with veepstakes processes past, said yesterday that it was difficult ''to read the tea leaves when Kerry interacts with these other politicians," because the candidate's private thoughts and impressions of the running mate field are largely unknown.

Kerry spent yesterday campaigning and fund-raising, taking a boat tour with Landrieu off the coast of Louisiana to observe signs of erosion and environmental degradation. At one point on board the ''Fishing Magician," he bemoaned the financial difficulties of fishermen and agreed with Landrieu's comparison of them to farmers.

''That's a similarity -- I've argued that for years" both in Massachusetts and in the Senate, Kerry said, ''because, you know, our fishermen are farmers; they fish and they farm the ocean. . . . These guys do need help."

In Washington yesterday, the Kerry team announced its largest television advertising buy yet to introduce the senator to voters, a rotating broadcast in 17 battleground states of two ads that aides touted as stylish. One, titled ''Commitment," features Kerry making promises about job expansion and national security while looking directly into the camera -- ''where people can look him in the eye," campaign adviser Mike Donilon said yesterday. The second ad describes Kerry's plans to reach out to other countries to contribute money and soldiers to the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq.

The Bush campaign also released a new ad, ''Doublespeak," which attacks Kerry as a flip-flopper on taxes, education reform, and Iraq, and ends with an announcer saying: ''John Kerry's problem is not that people don't know him. It's that people do."

Patrick Healy can be reached at phealy@globe.com.