Really great Boston Globe story. "Kerry becomes a bridge-builder"

[TayTay]

This was "above the fold" in the http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/06/29/colleagues_say_kerry_is_in_midcareer_metamorphosis/">Boston Globe on June 29, 2009

Kerry becomes a bridge-builder
Forges connections in Mass. and Senate

For decades, Kerry has been dogged by a reputation for a lack of interest in local affairs and aloofness around his Senate colleagues - an attitude that, combined with his patrician habits, often got him labeled as arrogant. Even when he rode the strength of his foreign policy experience and the drama of his personal story to his party’s presidential nomination, a lack of affection for him hampered his candidacy.

But the Kerry who returned to the Senate from the presidential trail was a different man, many colleagues noted, and now, with his presidential ambitions behind him and the senior colleague who long dominated his state sidelined by cancer, Kerry is experiencing what fellow lawmakers describe as a midcareer metamorphosis.

Long regarded as a loner, Kerry now lingers on the Senate floor during votes, talking with colleagues. Once known more for his solo speeches on the floor, Kerry for months has been leading weekly strategy sessions with other senators to find consensus on a climate change bill - a tactic usually identified with Senator Edward M. Kennedy - and following up with friendly meetings with individual senators to address their objections.

Kerry’s Senate schedule is heavily packed with hearings, speeches and international travel associated with his new role as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But in Massachusetts, Kerry has taken an elevated role, keeping in close contact with local officials and securing federal grants for in-state projects. His staff has been directed to hold “office hours’’ in more than 350 communities, and has completed about 200 of the sessions this year to hear constituent concerns.

And on a personal level, Kerry’s Capitol Hill colleagues say, the five-term senator looks happier than he has in years, bustling around Washington with renewed vigor. Having failed to win the presidency in 2004 - and making a wrenching decision not to seek the job again in 2008 - the 65-year-old Kerry has embraced his role as the Senate’s leading foreign policy voice, while protecting the ailing Kennedy’s vision for healthcare overhaul on the Senate Finance Committee, one of the panels writing the legislation.

Now that's the story I've been waiting to see for quite a while. What took you so long to see that Globbies?