For Edwards, a relationship that never quite fit

The Edwards camp complained that it was hard to know what the Kerry campaign wanted, and when. “In the beginning it was what both of us were doing, was running a 100 percent positive campaign, and that was the campaign I came into,” Mr. Edwards said in the recent interview. “It was natural for me.”

Mr. Edwards pointedly declined to talk about his conversations or relationship with Mr. Kerry, saying only, “I respected and admired John Kerry.”

Mr. Edwards understood his job was to be tough on the Bush-Cheney administration. “I did it, and I did it with everything I had,” he said. “Would I have rather been the presidential candidate? Of course. That’s why I ran.”

The two men were better than the sum of their parts on the rare occasions they campaigned together; Mr. Kerry seemed more energetic and easygoing, and Mr. Edwards seemed to present his case for Mr. Kerry better when he was next to him, like a client in a courtroom.

But their differences strained the relationship, and ultimately, the campaign. There were small things, like help-hope. Mr. Kerry inserted “help” into his speech the night before he was to give it. Mr. Edwards’s speech had been written two weeks in advance, and he did not want to change lines. (He tried “help” once, an aide recalled, and thought it sounded goofy.)

And there was the overshadowing issue of Iraq, a debate that brought out everything Mr. Edwards found most maddening about Mr. Kerry.

Both men had voted for the 2002 resolution authorizing President Bush to go to war with Iraq; Mr. Edwards had sponsored it with Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut. In 2004, they found themselves in an impossible position: antiwar Democrats were pushing Mr. Kerry to say he would pull out troops, while Republicans were calling him a flip-flopper whenever he tried to attack Mr. Bush on the war.

Mr. Kerry had increasing doubts about the war. But Mr. Edwards argued that they should not renounce their votes — they had to show conviction and consistency.

Mr. Kerry yielded to his running mate after Mr. Bush issued a challenge in early August: would Mr. Kerry still vote the same way, knowing now that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction? Mr. Kerry told reporters he would have voted the same, but done everything else about the war differently.

Gesture of defiance
The Republicans delighted in another flip-flop. Six weeks later, Mr. Kerry gave a speech at New York University declaring that he would not have voted for the war, calling it a “profound diversion” from the real threat, Osama bin Laden. Mr. Edwards had argued against the speech in a conference call into the early morning hours. While Mr. Kerry was hailed for showing resolve, the campaign never fully recovered from the accusation that the Democratic presidential candidate — unlike Mr. Bush — did not know what he stood for.

On Election Day, the running mates spent much of the day believing exit polls that showed them winning. The next morning, with Ohio still up in the air, Mr. Edwards pressed to send lawyers to Columbus to challenge the way the state counted provisional ballots. But Mr. Kerry finally concluded that even winning all those ballots would not make him president.

As the men ended the campaign at Faneuil Hall in Boston, Mr. Edwards refused to say “lose” or “concede” or “defeat” — what his wife, Elizabeth, described in her memoir as his “small gesture” of defiance.

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