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JOHN KERRY has something in common with Al Gore, and that’s not meant as a compliment. Whereas Bill Clinton glosses over differences and contradictions so effortlessly that he can make you believe they never existed, with Gore and Kerry you can hear the gears turning and the levers clanking as they seek to reconcile and appease various groups of voters.

Gore would pander, boasting of his tobacco-farming experience even after his sister had died of lung cancer. Kerry fudges, telling a crowd that he voted for $87 billion in reconstruction money for Afghanistan and Iraq before he voted against it, and offering so many shades of gray that it can be hard to tell where he stands. He’s not a flip-flopper, as the Republicans would have you believe. But on too many issues he’s what used to be called a mugwump — that is, someone with his mug on one side of the fence and his wump on the other, shifting his emphasis depending on the circumstances and the audience. As political shortcomings go, this does not rank with, say, launching an unnecessary war that has cost nearly 1000 American lives. But it is a shortcoming nevertheless, and the Republicans have already spent tens of millions of dollars in negative advertising to exploit it.

Or consider the issue of same-sex marriage. As is his wont, Kerry has staked out a highly nuanced position. His voting record on gay rights is generally excellent. In 1996 he voted against the loathsome Defense of Marriage Act, which passed anyway and was eagerly signed by Clinton, then running for re-election. More recently Kerry opposed a constitutional amendment, supported by Bush, that would ban same-sex marriage. Yet Kerry himself says he opposes gay marriage, though he supports civil unions that would provide all the rights, benefits, and protections of marriage.

Which leads to folks like Bennett Lawson, a young gay man from Chicago, supporting Kerry at least in part because he doesn’t believe him. I met Lawson outside a gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender caucus meeting at the Sheraton. An aide to Chicago-area congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, Lawson had volunteered to work at the convention doing outreach to the GLBT community. On the day we talked, that outreach consisted mainly of making sure no one grabbed any of the bag lunches that had been prepared for caucus-goers.

I asked Lawson whether he was put off by Kerry’s opposition to gay marriage. "He’s running nationwide in a country that is not exactly comfortable with gay marriage," Lawson replied. "His record is very, very strong on gay issues. Every good liberal has to moderate things in order to run nationwide — or, in Illinois, to run statewide — but his record really speaks for itself." I told Lawson that he sounded like he didn’t believe Kerry when he says he genuinely opposes same-sex marriage. "No," he replied, laughing. "You know what? I don’t."

I also briefly interviewed California senator Barbara Boxer as she was running off to an engagement. She had just finished speaking to the GLBT caucus, which greeted her with raucous applause. So I was surprised when she told me that her position on gay marriage was precisely the same as Kerry’s: civil unions and domestic partnerships with all the rights of marriage, yes; marriage itself, no. I asked her whether she was concerned that the Bush campaign would use the enthusiasm of Kerry’s gay, pro-marriage supporters against him. "If they want to do that, I think they would be making a terrible mistake," she said. Yet the dilemma is clear enough. Lawson — and no doubt many other gay activists — firmly believes that politicians such as Kerry and Boxer are winking in their direction when they claim that they oppose gay marriage. That is exactly what the Republicans are saying as well.

By striving not to be a risk-taker, Kerry is taking a different kind of risk — that he will suffer all of the political downside associated with supporting gay marriage, but only some of the upside. The Republicans are going to paint Kerry as a gay-marriage advocate regardless of what he says. But by continuing to assert that he doesn’t support same-sex marriage, he may cause some gay and lesbian voters who decide to stay home on Election Day. Or vote for Ralph Nader.

It’s that kind of nuanced — or overly nuanced — view that might protect Kerry from feeling the heat that comes with taking strong stands, but that also keeps him from inspiring much devotion among his supporters. After Senator Ted Kennedy delivered a bellowing, voice-cracking endorsement of Kerry on Tuesday night, Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi, appearing on WBUR Radio (90.9 FM), observed that Kennedy has been a staunch critic of Bush’s Iraq policy, referring to it in his speech as a "misguided war" — a position that Kerry can’t quite bring himself to embrace.

At a pre-convention forum last Thursday in the Mary Baker Eddy Library, Christian Science Monitor political reporter Liz Marlantes attributed Kerry’s caution to his years in the Senate, and to the experience all veteran politicians have with getting burned for things they have said. "The danger," Marlantes said, "is that they come across as not having a strong position on anything."

In most elections, that might be a prescription for success. But there are signs that 2004 isn’t like most elections.