Like some before him, Kerry snared by large boasts

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell yesterday challenged Sen. John Kerry, the likely Democratic nominee, to identify the foreign leaders who he says want to see him elected president.

Mr. Kerry said last week foreign leaders have told him face to face: “You’ve got to win this one. You’ve got to beat this guy.” He said the foreign leaders cannot say so publicly for fear of displeasing the Bush administration.

“If he feels it is that important an assertion to make, he ought to list some names,” Mr. Powell told “Fox News Sunday.” “If he can’t list names, then perhaps he should find something else to talk about. I don’t know what foreign leaders Senator Kerry is talking about. It’s an easy charge, an easy assertion to make.”

Mr. Kerry declined yesterday to name any of those leaders, saying private conversations should stay private.

“No leader would obviously share a conversation if I started listing them,” the senator told a town-hall meeting in Bethlehem, Pa.

The Massachusetts senator said he would not “play that game” of whether he had had conversations with foreign officials other than heads of state and heads of government.

“The point is that all across the world, America is meeting with a new level of hostility,” he said. “I have heard from foreign leaders elsewhere in the world who don’t appreciate the Bush administration and would love to see a change in the leadership of the United States.”

A review of Mr. Kerry’s schedules and campaign appearances shows that he has not made an official trip abroad since he announced his candidacy and that he has been in the same city as a foreign leader only once during that period.

Mr. Kerry’s statements raised comparisons to previous presidential candidates whose claims hurt or even ended their campaigns for the White House.

Al Gore said during the 2000 campaign that he had “played the lead role” in creating the Internet.

On another occasion he described how his father, the late Sen. Albert Gore of Tennessee, “taught me to clean out hog waste with a shovel and how to clear land with a two-bladed ax.”

“He taught me how to plow a steep hillside with a team of mules. He taught me how to take up hay all day long in the hot sun.”

Mr. Gore grew up in Washington, where the family lived in the Fairfax Hotel on Embassy Row, and attended exclusive private schools and Harvard University.

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