WE NOMINATED WHO?:

Kerry must inspire or lose faithful forever (Joshua Chaffin, July 29 2004, Financial Times)

Mr Kerry has had, at best, mixed success on the road. Joe Keenan, a 43-year-old appliance salesman, scanned the crowd at a John Kerry rally in Sioux City, Iowa, and then paused for a moment to measure the depth of their support.

"I don't know if they're pro-Kerry or anti-Bush," Mr Keenan finally concluded. "They're all waiting to see what Kerry does at the convention. They've got to know him better."

Polls show that nearly a third of American voters still do not believe they have a sense of Mr Kerry as a person, even if they may have heard repeatedly about his decorated service in Vietnam, or his legislative accomplishments.

Even some Democrats who were volunteering for the Kerry campaign on its barnstorming trip across the country this week quietly confided that they were drawn to other party figures such as Howard Dean.

At times, Mr Kerry overcame his reputation for lacklustre public speaking to conjure an affecting, even passionate performance. "I was in the anyone-but-Bush-camp, but the more I see him, the more I like him," said Marion Leary, an events producer, who attended a rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday. "I didn't get the wooden thing at all."

On other occasions, Mr Kerry appeared to bore people. His most disappointing stop may have been Saturday in Sioux City. The crowd, many of them senior citizens, was forced to wait under the prairie sun for hours - first for the late-running senator, then during a meandering speech from his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry. As he pointed at supporters in the crowd, flashing the same surprised-but- elated smile again and again, Mr Kerry appeared like a comic aping a disingenuous politician.

When he droned on about values, opportunity and other poll-tested political phrases, the older people in the crowd wilted.

Tellingly, despite Mr Kerry being one of the biggest figures to touch down in Sioux City since the explorers Lewis and Clark, the name on most people's lips there was that of his running mate, John Edwards.

"Where's John?" someone shouted from the crowd at one point, interrupting Mr Kerry.

Mr Keenan conceded that his wife was disappointed not to meet the vice-presidential candidate. "She was upset that Edwards wasn't here. He's the sex appeal."

Indeed, Mr Edwards' Clintonian magnetism appears to have drawn a sharp contrast with Mr Kerry throughout the country.

"I think Kerry's biggest problem is he hasn't defined himself, whereas the more you listen to Edwards, he has, and he does," said Andrew Meyer, 31, a stockbroker from Portsmouth, Virginia.

Democrats stuck themselves with the guy when he was "Anyone but Dean." Now they want to stick the country with him because he's "Anyone but Bush." How about a Democratic Party that could offer us somebody?

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 28, 2004 11:12 PM