The making of JFK the second

By Paul Reynolds BBC News Online world affairs correspondent

Senator John F Kerry's rise as the Democratic Party's presidential front-runner has sent governments around the world scrambling to find out who this second JFK from Massachusetts really is.

They will find a politician who is liberal on domestic issues and more conservative in foreign policy. Rather like John Fitzgerald Kennedy himself.

"Part of the American melting pot"

And like JFK the first (whom he knew when he was going out with Jacqueline Kennedy's half-sister) Mr Kerry is running less on his policies than on his personality.

He seems to be the man being chosen to defeat President Bush because he has a certain gravitas born of his long years in the Senate.

He is not entirely predictable on foreign policy.

He voted in favour of the war against Iraq in 2002 but has since been critical of American policy in Iraq.

He opposed President Bush senior's action to remove Iraq from Kuwait in 1991 but he was in favour of military action in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Somalia and Panama.

Military record

However he is critical of President Bush junior's leadership, saying that the United States has to re-enter the "community of nations", so a more moderate foreign policy might be expected under a Kerry administration.

He has made much of both his military service in Vietnam (which Mr Bush avoided by joining up with the Texas Air National Guard) and his subsequent opposition to the war.

Kerry was decorated for his duty in Vietnam

He can therefore present himself as someone who has done his duty, who knows war firsthand (he captained a gunboat in the Mekong Delta) and yet who also knows the limitations of war.

The contrast with George Bush is there without having to be spelled out.

That he had an instinct for politics early on was shown when he came back from Vietnam and asked a congressional committee: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

That he had an instinct for shrewdness was also shown when he was with a group of veterans who threw their medals onto the steps of the Capitol.

In fact, Kerry threw only his ribbons and kept his medals.

Mixed background

Unlike JFK the first, this one, though a Catholic from Massachusetts and with the name of Kerry, is not Irish by background.

The 'F' in his initials stands for Forbes, his mother's name.

One of her forebears was an Anglican clergyman.

Her own mother was a Winthrop, one of the founding families of New England.

But Kerry also has Jewish roots. His grandfather was born Fritz Kohn in what is now the Czech Republic.

Kohn emigrated to the United States and changed his name to Kerry in 1907.

He was a successful businessman though he committed suicide by shooting himself in a hotel room.

Kerry says he remembers his grandmother as a practising Catholic.

She had in fact been born Jewish and converted.

Thus, John F Kerry is very much part of the American melting pot.

But he is no son of the soil or toil. His own father was a diplomat and the family was always comfortably off.

Kerry went to schools in Switzerland, to a good private establishment in New Hampshire and then to Yale, where he joined the secret Skull and Bones club as did George W Bush, two years his junior.

Lucky man

It is quite convenient really. He has solid Yankee connections, an interesting immigrant background and a lot of folk in Massachusetts probably think he is Irish anyway.

Not a bad for a presidential candidate.

Democrats are seeking a candidate with a conventional approach

And if his voting record on domestic issue is liberal (he is in favour of abortion and gay rights and is solid on the environment) he is no bleeding heart.

He was a tough prosecutor and went into state politics on the back of his record.

Perhaps above all, he is a something of a lucky politician and a lucky man.

He has married two heiresses. Oscar Wilde might have remarked that to marry one is fortunate but to marry two looks like calculation.

His political timing is certainly good. He has come to the fore at the very moment when the Democrats realised that they were seeking not the radical approach of a Howard Dean, but the conventional approach of a long serving senator.

Success now also means something else. He will be coming under relentless scrutiny.

It has already been noted that he has had friends who are congressional lobbyists, though he denies that there have been any quid pro quos.

Republicans have come to range their guns on him.

He is being portrayed as a liberal in the Edward Kennedy mould.

Expect much more of this if he wins the nomination.