I think it's more than plain from what I have written for chez Nadezhda so far that I badly want George W. Bush to lose the upcoming election. That means not just that I won't be voting for Bush, but also that I'm not going to be voting for Ralph Nader or for that Libertarian guy or anyone else that doesn't have a chance of winning. But I haven't given much of a hint as to what I think about the guy I will be voting for.

So now I'd like to talk a little bit about Senator John Forbes Kerry, the man I very much hope will soon become the 44th President of the United States. I'm not going to talk much about his platform or his biography; I think Kerry has done a decent job of introducing himself and his program with his campaign, and if you want to know more about those things, there is plenty of information for you on the Web. What I want to do is talk honestly about my sense of John Kerry the man, born of watching with some interest his entire career on the national political scene, and especially from watching him closely over the last 15 months or so.

What are his politics? I hope most of you are aware that the GOP campaign theme about Kerry being "the most liberal Senator" is misleading, based on a deceptively small sampling of recent votes, and that his lifetime rating makes him no more than the 11th-most liberal Senator. Considering that Mr. Kerry is a Senator from Massachusetts, he could probably have gotten away with really being the most liberal Senator if he had wanted to; another way of looking at that rating is to consider that probably over 95 of his Senate colleagues represent a more conservative electorate than does Kerry.

My feeling is that Kerry is at heart a Clintonian moderate liberal: liberal on social policy and moderate on fiscal and security policy. My strongest feeling is that Kerry, unlike Bush, is a Burkian conservative who doesn't want to change things rapidly, and is a man who will govern cautiously as long as caution is a reasonable alternative.

How able is he? John Kerry is no genius. In fact, he is the least intellectually impressive Democratic Presidential nominee in at least three decades--but that is only because the Democrats have recently made a habit of nominating impressive and policy-savvy candidates who had shown signs of separating themselves from their political peers.

But while Kerry is no genius, he's a smart guy, and he has had his nose in politics, the law, and governance for most of his life. As a result, he has become impressively familiar with policy minutiae, the mechanisms of governance, and how to use government to achieve specific goals. It was obvious in his three debates with George W. Bush that there is no comparison between the two candidates's knowledge bases in almost every policy arena in which the President operates.

Can he be trusted? It depends on what this question means. Is he a man of his word? Yes. Does he use weasel-wording and cautionary language to hide his real intentions? Yes. Are his major campaign themes as misleading as his opponent's? No.

I think it's telling that the Republicans chose not to go after Kerry as a liar. It's tried and true for them, and it worked just fine on Al Gore even though he had a long and well-earned reputation for probity. Kerry is just too stolid, too careful, too difficult to catch out in even a small lie, as is shown by pitiable GOP attempts such as the "Cambodia" and "Bulgarian ambassador" efforts.

But is Kerry baring his soul and his true intentions on the campaign trail? I don't think so. He's running a careful, poll-tested, incremental campaign, for all the world like the campaign Al Gore ran on in 2000. He is hoping to put together a pastiche of popular Democratic programs and focus-grouped small innovations, and essentially asking us to trust him, should he be elected, to actually lead once he is in office.

All of which leads to what is, for my money, the real question:

Can he lead? I think he can. I think John Kerry is an essentially cautious man and a man of sound judgment, but I think his career shows that he will step away from his caution and act boldly when the chips are down.

The "cautious" part should be self-evident from Kerry's campaign. While caution is generally a virtue, it's also an attribute that can be over-done, and I for one would certainly have liked to have seen Kerry pull out a few more stops during the campaign (the don't-criticize-the-President Convention comes readily to mind). On the other hand, we may be due a little caution in the Oval Office after four years of a riverboat gambler who staked our national capabilities on a high-risk venture in Iraq and is even throwing dem fiscal bones in a venturesome supply-side tax game. After all, our nation still isn't in such a desperate condition that drastic measures are called for.

But what is really encouraging about Mr. Kerry is that he has shown signs in his career of being willing to take risks, when necessary. He did it, unless the Swift Boat Vets were a lot more truthful than I think, when he won his Silver Star in Vietnam by beaching his boat and going afoot to take out a rocketeer. In what I consider the high point of his career, he did it again when he risked making powerful enemies, and in fact did make bitter enemies who dog him to this day, by testifying before the Senate to make a case against the continuation of the Vietnam War. I consider this case instructive, for Kerry took bold and risky action when, I believe, it was really needed--remember that our decision to withdraw from Vietnam had already been made by that time, that the only question was when, and that Kerry's question of how do you ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake, was the real question at the heart of the matter. (In fact, another 2,000 Americans and tens of thousands of Vietnamese died in Vietnam after that testimony, to no good effect.) The testimony of a decorated veteran officer had a dramatic effect on the public psyche and noticeably increased the pressure on Nixon to hasten our withdrawal.

I think he has done it again in this campaign. After an overly cautious early start, Kerry tamped down the caution and threw fire into his campaign at what looks to have been the right time, and has shown solid judgment in deciding when to criticize Bush and when to pull back. It takes both judgment and boldness to earn a reputation as a strong closer--it takes the stuff of which winners are made. And after running from 5-10 points behind in the polls through September, it looks as if Kerry is closing strong again and may be in a position to claim the Presidency based on a Democratic ground game that is expected to be the most effective ever put together.

So why vote for Kerry? To some extent, you have to take a risk to vote for Kerry. He's the devil you don't know, and there's something beneath his packaged campaign persona that none of us have seen.

For my money, it's easy to assume that the unknown devil is the one to go with when the known devil is such a devilly, devilly devil. But there's more than that to why I'm voting for John Kerry. He was not my first pick in the Democratic campaign, but it was only because I thought some of the other candidates would have made better campaigners, not because I think they would've made better Presidents.

Essentially, I think John Kerry is a cautious man of moderate politics, with a strong resume and a solid policy grounding, who is a bit of enigma but can be counted on to show good judgment and the strength of a leader when the chips are down. The enigmatic part leaves me wary, but the rest is the stuff of a fine President, if not a great one. He's a man this ABB voter is proud and happy to have an opportunity to vote for.