Heinz steps up for Kerry

BOSTON - The second evening of the Democratic convention belonged to Teresa Heinz Kerry.

The candidate's wife was appearing at a watershed in the campaign, 48 hours before her husband's acceptance speech that could make or break John Kerry's White House bid - just when George W. Bush seems to be regaining ground.

After weeks of being battered by Iraq and then the announcement of John Edwards as Kerry's running mate, the President led his rival by 48 to 46 per cent in a Washington Post/ABC News poll, reversing a trend of several weeks.

Heinz Kerry led a parade of Democratic veterans and newcomers who praised Kerry's values and said his leadership could unite a divided United States and restore credibility to the White House.

Heinz Kerry described her husband as a fighter who would vigorously defend America, reclaim the country's moral bearings and "always be the first in the line of fire".

"John Kerry will give us back our faith in America," Heinz Kerry said, capping a line-up of Democrats representing their liberal past and hopes for the future.

Senator Edward Kennedy welcomed the delegates to his and Kerry's hometown with a twist on Franklin Roosevelt's Depression-era warning that the only thing Americans had to fear was fear itself.

"Today we say the only thing we have to fear is four more years of George Bush."

Keynote speaker Barack Obama, an Illinois state senator, said Kerry could reach across the country's cultural and political divides.

"Our party has chosen a man who embodies the best this country has to offer," Obama said, adding that the election in November would be a choice between "a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope".

Ron Reagan, son of the former Republican President, largely steered clear of politics, not mentioning either Kerry or Bush as he pushed for an end to restrictions that Bush has supported on stem cell research.

Heinz Kerry said her husband, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, "earned his medals the old-fashioned way, by putting his life on the line for his country".

But she drew a contrast with Bush's decision to launch a war in Iraq and said Kerry would only send US soldiers into war as a last resort.

"For him the names of many friends inscribed on the Vietnam Memorial - that cold stone - testify to the awful toll exacted by leaders who mistake stubbornness for strength," Heinz Kerry said.

She represented something absent this week - a frisson of unpredictability and a breath of controversy.

Hours after she had told a reporter from the conservative-leaning Pittsburgh Tribune-Review to "shove it", the equally conservative Boston Herald breathlessly unearthed a 1975 book about political marriages yesterday.

According to the book, Teresa, who was then married to the late Republican Senator John Heinz, once declared that Edward Kennedy was a "perfect bastard" if he was maintaining his marriage to his former wife Joan merely to avoid upsetting the Catholic vote.

The Herald also dug up some 1976 remarks of Heinz Kerry's, to the effect that the Democratic Party machine was "putrid".

Yesterday, the Kennedy camp laughed off the fuss. But the episode only underlines how the extraordinary career of Heinz Kerry (who only formally left the Republican Party early last year) will provide material galore for the Bush-Cheney campaign's muck-raking Opposition Research Department. But will they choose to use it, and if so, how?

For Republican campaign strategists, those are tricky decisions. Elections are not won and lost by First Ladies, and beating up on a potential one may be seen as unfair. Nonetheless, First Ladies are part of an overall presidential package.

If voters can be discreetly made to feel uncomfortable with Heinz Kerry, that may be bad news for her husband in a close election campaign.

The daughter of Portuguese colonialists in Africa, owner of five homes and fluent in as many languages, Heinz Kerry speaks her mind, in breach of all the norms of political wife-speak.

In terms of sheer exoticism, even the cosmopolitan Jackie Kennedy does not come close to her.

If you live in Kansas (or even parts of Massachusetts), Heinz Kerry must seem a foreign creature indeed.

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS