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Kerrey's re-entry into politics came sooner than he wanted. When Democratic Senator Edward Zorinsky died suddenly in 1987, Governor Kay Orr named a Republican to the vacancy. After a semester teaching a course on Vietnam at Santa Barbara, Kerrey decided to run for the seat and defeated the appointee, David Karnes, by 100,000 votes. Groused Orr: "Nebraskans are having a love affair with Bob Kerrey," a remark that drives Kerrey intimates up the wall with its implication that he is more style than substance.
In Washington, Kerrey is usually in his office by 6 a.m. He jogs six miles (on his good leg and his prosthesis) almost daily, has run marathons, reads voluminously. "He always does his homework," says Leahy. On weekends, he usually returns to Nebraska, where he divides his time between constituents and his children, Ben, 15, and Lindsey, 13, who live in Omaha with their mother. On longer recesses, he is likely to travel abroad (early this year to Vietnam and Cambodia, in part for sentimental reasons, chiefly to shore up his foreign policy credentials). He is critical of the Bush Administration's Asian policy, but has yet to formulate one of his own, which he believes is a President's role, not a Senator's. Congressional colleagues, including some Democrats, fault Kerrey as unfocused and naive about Senate customs. Early this year, for example, he introduced a bill to revamp the savings-and-loan bailout agency, the Resolution Trust Corporation, even though he is not a member of the Banking Committee. "Kerrey should have known better," says a House Republican. "With five members under investigation in the Keating scandal, the Senate isn't about to revisit the S&L scandal in an election year."