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Kerry emerged from his investigations in the 1980s with more enemies than friends. His hometown papers never had much use for him, and the local pols nicknamed him "Live Shot" for all the quality time he spent in front of the cameras. But Kerry did not just take the easy telegenic assignments. In 1991 he agreed to serve as chairman of a Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs investigating the fate of American soldiers missing or held captive in Vietnam. Few jobs could have been more thankless; various paramilitary groups were exploiting the families of missing soldiers by insisting some had been left behind and launching Rambo-style "rescue missions." The committee's ranking Republican, New Hampshire's Bob Smith, was obsessed with conspiracy theories. "At that time, the POW issue was white hot, I mean white hot," recalls Senator John McCain, himself a former POW. "I've never seen an issue like that. There was so much raw emotion."
Until that point, the Senate's various Vietnam vets had not exactly been close. "For a long time, I didn't spend much time with him," McCain says of Kerry. "Not out of dislike, but not out of particular like either." He had disapproved of Kerry's conduct in 1971 as a leader of the antiwar movement, when Kerry and other vets famously threw their ribbons, medals and dog tags onto the steps of the Capitol. "I've never discussed it with him, but I didn't like the throwing of the medals," McCain says. "It showed an improper lack of respect for the people who did so much for those medals." But over the course of the POW/MIA investigation, during many of Kerry's 17 trips to Vietnam and conversations long into the night, McCain's view of Kerry went from distrust to respect.
In the end, Kerry got the whole committee, including Smith, to sign the report, which said there were no POWs left alive in Vietnam. "There were three straight all-nighters in Kerry's office writing that report," remembers a G.O.P. staff member. "And Kerry was there the whole time, checking in, keeping all the staffers happy. And he was impressive at all times." Offering a kind of pickled praise, this Republican says Kerry "is better than he seems. He's narcissistic, but that goes with being a Senator. He's an extraordinary diplomat. He's got good forensic skills; he's excellent at picking apart an argument." The report allowed McCain and Kerry to press the Clinton Administration to normalize relations with Vietnam. "There were no klieg lights for that," Kennedy says of Kerry's diplomatic effort. "That was loaded with possible dangers. It was just absolutely dynamite politically. And it took years for John to get this done."
From then on, the Senate had its own band of brothers. During the South Carolina G.O.P. primary four years ago, Kerry immediately gathered the signatures of all the other Senate military veterans on a letter defending McCain against the claims spread by the Bush campaign that McCain had abandoned veterans during his years in Congress. "That meant a lot to me," says McCain. When Nebraska Democrat Bob Kerrey was accused of having taken part in a massacre, Kerry and the other veterans raced to his defense in person and in the Op-Ed pages.