For Kerry, path narrows

Much has been made in the last few weeks of Kerry's perceived transformation on the campaign trail from patrician policy wonk to more accessible man of the people. But, in both Iowa and New Hampshire, it was the passion of the senior senator from Massachusetts that helped a still-stilted Kerry close the deal with many skeptical primary voters.

On Sunday, as the nation's first primary wound toward yesterday's close, Kennedy's roaring endorsement of Kerry in Nashua, Hampton, and Somersworth made Howard Dean's Iowa yell sound less like a scream than a whisper. Kennedy's imprimatur gave Kerry a crucial lift with many liberal Democrats who are uneasy with the presidential candidate's record of equivocation on Iraq and a host of domestic issues.

Kennedy has provided cover for his junior colleague, letting Kerry stand in his shadow while Kennedy led the fight against the Bush administration's war in Iraq and its stealth campaign to privatize Medicare. Kerry voted for that war, which he now opposes, and he skipped the vote on Medicare, which he says should be preserved as a federal entitlement for the elderly.

Everywhere he went in New Hampshire, Kerry confronted the same question: Why did he give George Bush a blank check in Iraq without more solid evidence? It was Kennedy, not Kerry, the Vietnam veteran and antiwar activist of the 1970s, who recognized that the Iraq Resolution was nothing less than the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution revisited.

How could Kerry ask voters to trust his judgment on Iraq if he was so easily duped? How could he ask them to credit him with a foresight he didn't demonstrate? He couldn't, so in Iowa and New Hampshire, he had Kennedy do it for him.

Why Kennedy let himself be used as a campaign prop is a more complicated question. Massachusetts and the US Senate unite them, even as their views on Iraq, welfare, the minimum wage, and affirmative action have on occasion divided them. The Democratic convention comes to Boston this summer, the national party's 70th birthday gift to Kennedy. Maybe crowning a favorite son with the prize that eluded Kennedy in 1980 is the ribbon on that package.

Even as Kennedy stumped for Kerry, though, it was Howard Dean who sang the senior senator's praises for calling the Iraq war ``one of the worst blunders in more than two centuries of American foreign policy.''

The former Vermont governor credited Kennedy with ``performing an important national service, standing up to George Bush and telling the truth about a war - marketed for political gain - that has put the state of our nation at risk.''

``If only my opponents from Washington had demonstrated the foresight and courage that Senator Kennedy has in consistently standing up to say this was the wrong war at the wrong time,'' Dean said.

That question will continue to dog Kerry as the casualties continue to mount. Kennedy is no use to him now, as Kerry heads off to do battle in the more conservative terrain he will need to conquer to win the nomination.

Iraq will not be his only challenge. In South Carolina, voters will not let him split the difference on gay marriage. Arguing, as Kerry has, that he supports civil unions but not ``gay marriage'' is an evasion after the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Kerry will need, too, to clarify his doubts about affirmative action in a state where 30 percent of the population is African-American, more than 90 percent of them Democrats.

Kennedy made the pitch and closed the sale for Kerry where he could. Beginning today, the candidate is going to have to sell himself.

Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at mcnamara@globe.com.