Flying from Columbia, S.C., to Wilmington, Del., last Friday, John Kerry sat down with TIME senior correspondent Douglas Waller and writer-reporter Eric Roston.
TIME: Are you too liberal to be elected President?
KERRY: That's a phony label that people try [to apply], but it doesn't work. Do you know the first thing I did when I got to Congress in 1985? I joined with Fritz Hollings as one of the original authors and sponsors of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit-reduction bill. It was heresy at home, but it proved to be the right policy. I've voted for welfare reform, one of the major...