WASHINGTON — Teresa Heinz Kerry is small and soft-spoken and supportive of her husband as they sit in their Georgetown garden, sipping peach iced tea. She wants to help him. She is ready to campaign for him. But it's clear a presidential campaign is not her first choice of how to spend her time.
"Basically I am a shy person. I like people, but I am very private." Then the proper political spouse kicks in. "But I also am engaged in ideas and trying to solve problems. And this is an arena in which you can do that."
She's talked about her serious work on education, pensions, the arts and the environment. But she's also discussed her prenuptial agreement, her Botox treatments and how she'd "maim" an unfaithful husband. She's said she'd be a "ninny" if she didn't have strong opinions at her age (64, five years older than Kerry).
Heinz Kerry made no secret of her disdain for politics even as she was married to one senator, then another. Her stock response to their presidential ambitions was "over my dead body." But here she is on her patio, calling Kerry "sweetie" and clasping his hand, discussing her philanthropic work and what she'd bring to a Kerry administration.
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She called political campaigns "the graveyard of real ideas and the birthplace of empty promises."
"I don't think politics is worthless," she says, but "the general tone of campaigns has not gotten any better. One can try. John is trying to set a standard."