Five years on, Senator Kerry makes comeback

U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-MA) speaks during a ''Celebration of Life Memorial Service'' for late Senator Edward Kennedy at the John F. Kennedy Library and Presidential Museum in Boston, Massachusetts August 28, 2009.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The new go-to guy in the U.S. Senate is Democrat John Kerry, who was long shunned and even ridiculed after his failed 2004 U.S. presidential bid.

As the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry has earned power and respect in a career comeback encouraged by his friend, the late liberal giant and fellow Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy.

Kerry now leads a charge for a bipartisan legislation to stem global warming. He is also a major, and wary, voice in the debate on whether to boost U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

As a member of the Finance Committee, Kerry has worked to find ways to fund U.S. President Barack Obama's top domestic priority: revamping the $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare system.

"John Kerry is really becoming a significant force in the Senate in a way that he just wasn't," said Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank.

"If you were looking a couple of years ago and said, 'Who are the 10 or 20 most significant senators?'" Kerry wouldn't have been high on that list, if he were on it at all, the congressional analyst said. "And now he would be."

Kerry lost the 2004 White House race to incumbent George W. Bush, a Republican. The richest person in Congress, Kerry was accused during the presidential campaign of being out of touch with ordinary Americans.

After the election, he seemed to mope around the Senate for months and fellow Democrats at one point did not even want him to campaign for them in the 2006 congressional election.

The 65-year-old liberal now enjoys a resurgence.

"I'm in a terrific position to be able to make a difference on things that motivated me to run (for president) in the first place, and that still motivates me," Kerry said in an interview in his Senate office.

Kerry said right-wing opponents spent millions of dollars in the 2004 campaign to attack him, and there is little more they can do.

"I feel very calm and confident about who I am politically and personally. I feel very comfortable with the fights I am fighting and where I am," said Kerry.

First elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984, Kerry said there were times when he considered leaving after the 2004 defeat.

TURNAROUND

He dropped that notion when he and fellow Democrats won control of Congress from Republicans in 2006, helping set the stage for taking the White House last year.

Kerry acknowledged in the interview with Reuters that his turnaround came after Kennedy, one of the most influential U.S. lawmakers ever, offered advice.

Kennedy made his pitch in August 2008, 12 months before he died of brain cancer and after Kerry decided not to make another run for the White House that year, Kerry said.

The then-senior Massachusetts senator told his younger colleague he had been in a similar situation after losing the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination battle to President Jimmy Carter. Kennedy told Kerry he could "write his own ticket" in terms of influence: he had seniority, a national network from his campaign and 20 years of service ahead of him in the Senate.

Kennedy added that Kerry needed a major committee chairmanship to make a mark, one Massachusetts Democrat said.

Five months later, Kerry got his first one. He took over at Foreign Relations, replacing Joe Biden, who resigned from the Senate to become U.S. vice president.

When Kennedy died in August, Kerry succeeded him as the senior senator from Massachusetts.

"I valued his counsel and advice enormously, and learned a lot watching him," said Kerry. Like Kennedy, Kerry is reaching across the political aisle to try to get legislation passed.

Kerry seems to have decided "it's a lot better to be a significant senator than a backbencher," said Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy.

"John Kerry is extraordinarily bright. He's always had the potential to do whatever he wants to here," Leahy said.

At the Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry has gone full circle, from witness to chairman.

As a decorated combat veteran of the Vietnam War in 1971, Kerry testified before the panel in opposition to that war.

Kerry was in Afghanistan to review the war there with U.S. military brass and soldiers in the field.

"I've asked to meet with guys who are out there slogging it out," Kerry said before he left Washington last week. "I want to hear what they have to say."

(Editing by Doina Chiacu)