Kerry has not given any formal interviews since his defeat. But on Nov. 11, he summoned a Newsweek reporter to his house on Boston's fashionable Louisberg Square. He wanted to complain about Newsweek's election issue, which he says was unduly harsh and gossipy about him, his staff and his wife. (The 45,000-word article, the product of a yearlong reporting project, is being published next week as a book, "Election 2004," by PublicAffairs.)

Details from that interview appear in the Jan. 10 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, Jan. 3). Kerry talks with Newsweek about the campaign, why he lost and what's ahead for him. He did not wish to be directly quoted touting himself, however; he did not wish to appear defensive or boastful.

When asked why he lost the election, Kerry points to history and, in a somewhat inferential, roundabout way, to his own failure to connect to voters – a failure that kept him from erasing the Bush campaign's portrait of him as a flip-flopper, reports Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas.

Kerry said that he was proud of his campaign, that he had nearly defeated a popular incumbent who had enjoyed a three-year head start on organizing and fund raising. Sitting presidents are never defeated in wartime, he insisted (true, though two, LBJ and Harry Truman, chose not to run for another term, during Vietnam and Korea, respectively).

While he quarreled with descriptions of his speaking style as "soporific," Kerry tacitly acknowledged that he failed to connect with enough voters on a personal level. Jose Ferreira, Kerry's nephew, told his uncle, "Some people are saying that your candidacy was driven by ABB [Anything But Bush]." Kerry replied: "Do you think so?"

Ferreira said that once people got to know Kerry, they were intensely loyal. "Those are the people I let down," Kerry said, falling silent. In conversation with Newsweek, Kerry seemed particularly interested in trying to find a way to speak to ordinary voters that didn't sound too grandiose or "political."

Though Kerry did not directly criticize his friend Bob Shrum, it's clear he did not feel well served by his message makers and speechwriters.

The deeper problem may be Kerry's personality, which may be too distant or reserved to win mass affection. As Thomas left Kerry's house in November, Kerry called out and followed him down the street. Kerry wanted to show a letter from a schoolgirl that had been left on his stoop. The letter read, in part, "John Kerry, you're the greatest!"

Kerry looked into the reporter's eye. "The pundits have never liked me," he said. "Is it the way I look? The way I sound?" He seemed vulnerable for a moment, then caught himself, smiled and walked home to his empty house.

In the heady days before the election, Kerry's top aides sat around picking a Cabinet. Nowadays the foreign-policy team still meets, on the assumption that it could be reconstituted for '08. But the reality is, "it's mostly sitting around some lawyer's office and asking each other if we've heard about jobs," says a member of the team.

As for Kerry, says this adviser, "he thinks he's the front-runner for '08 without recognizing that he needs to do some soul-searching. If he wants to come back, he'll have to come back as a different candidate, not the stiff who plays it safe and takes four sides of every issue."

Editor's note: