Candidate profile: Sen. John Kerry
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Sen. John Kerry savors his victory Monday night in Iowa.
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From the Wolf Blitzer Reports staff in Washington:
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- This week, he seems to be a political phenomenon. After being written off weeks before the Iowa caucuses, he gathered late momentum, then, achieved an electrifying finish Monday night. But Sen. John Kerry is no newcomer to the national political scene.
Suddenly, John Kerry has made his way to the front of a Democratic race that more Americans -- certainly the Americans who work in the White House -- are paying attention to.
"John Kerry had his back against the wall, and in January turned his campaign completely around," says Kerry biographer Douglas Brinkley.
But make no mistake; this is not a candidate from nowhere. John Kerry is not a man with late-blooming aspirations.
John Forbes Kerry is, in some ways, the classic eastern blue blood. His mother was from the prestigious Forbes family; his father was a World War II test pilot, who later served in the State Department.
It was a privileged life, but one without roots. Kerry's formative years were spent in boarding schools in New England and Europe before he headed to Yale.
The one constant was his own ambition.
After weighing his options at graduation, Kerry was commissioned an officer in the Navy. It was 1966.
Less than two years later, he headed for Vietnam.
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He volunteered to command a gunboat. In the Mekong Delta, that meant serious danger.
Dozens of firefights with Viet Cong took the lives of several comrades and nearly took Kerry's.
Bravery and daring -- by some accounts, bordering on recklessness -- won him a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts.
Kerry returned a hero, but with profound bitterness.
In one well-documented episode, Kerry joined with other veterans, tossing their war medals onto the lawn of the Capitol. Kerry freely admitted the medals he threw were not his.
"I threw some medals back that belonged to some folks who asked me to throw them back for them," Kerry said in April, 2001.
But the image was building of a somber yet striking young man, as Kerry led demonstrations as part of the group "Vietnam Veterans Against the War."
The real catapult for John Kerry came in April, 1971 before a packed hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
"We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service," Kerry said of his time in Vietnam.
His testimony got the attention of the Nixon White House and voters back home in Massachusetts.
John Kerry was on his way.
Following a failed bid for Congress, he became a district attorney, lieutenant governor under Michael Dukakis and, in 1984, was elected the junior senator from Massachusetts.
John Kerry has served nearly 20 years as a senator -- through two marriages to women of profile and wealth and few missed photo opportunities with fellow veterans and war buddies. All the while, his ambition has never been far from the surface, along with a reputation forged in substance and sacrifice.
