Kerry, John Forbes (1943– )

US politician, senator for Massachusetts from 1984 and Democratic candidate for the presidency in 2004. He advocated expanded healthcare, a reversal of President George W Bush's tax cuts for the very wealthy, resuming negotiations on the Kyoto treaty on global warming, and a more multilateral foreign policy, based on closer working with the United Nations and US allies abroad. He supported the 2003 US-led war against Iraq, but later came to believe that Bush had misled the US population and was pursuing a reckless foreign policy. A decorated Vietnam War veteran, Kerry came back as an outspoken opponent of the war and gained national attention in 1971 when he testified on Vietnam to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He narrowly lost the election to Bush in a bitterly fought campaign.

Born in Aurora, Colorado, Kerry spent his early years in the family's native state of Massachusetts. His father's career as a diplomat in Europe meant that his early education was at a Swiss boarding school, with summer vacations spent at his mother's family's home in Brittany, France. He completed his schooling in Massachusetts and went on to study political science at Yale University, and also became active in Democratic politics, assisting Edward Kennedy's senatorial campaign in 1962. In 1966 he enlisted in the US Navy and became a gunboat captain in Vietnam, receiving a Silver Star for his actions in combat. However, he came to see the war as a mistake, and on his return to the USA in 1969 he became a spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. He trained as a lawyer 1973–76 and then worked as a prosecutor in Massachusetts, where he took on organized crime, before being elected lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1982.