JFK Goes Continental; Democratic presidential contender John F. Kerry may be even more popular across the Atlantic than he is at home.(America)(Cover Story)

Byline: Stryker McGuire, With Eric Pape in Paris, Emily Flynn in London, Katka Krosnar in Prague and Barbie Nadeau in Rome

Some of John Kerry's most ardent fans are not only not Democrats--they're not American. EUROPE WOULD VOTE FOR KERRY, blared a recent headline in a German newspaper--about the time an Italian news magazine was describing the Democratic front runner as the reincarnation of John F. Kennedy. The left-wing French daily Liberation announced that Kerry was "the kind of American we like." And don't forget the British band Coldplay, which eagerly endorsed the Lincoln-jawed liberal onstage at the Grammys.

What's going on? Partly, the exuberance reflects the fact that Kerry himself is a bit European. His mother, Rosemary Kerry, nee Forbes, was raised in the small village of St-Brice in Brittany after World War I. Kerry's paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Central Europe. He spent two years at a Swiss boarding school as a teenager, and summered in St-Brice at the sprawling family home, a stone mansion called Les Essarts. He speaks fluent French, as does his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry. (Born in Mozambique to Portuguese parents, she also speaks four other languages.) His first cousin Brice Lalonde is a well-known French politician--a former minister of the Environment, and now mayor of St-Brice. Lalonde suggests that WWII was a formative influence for the entire clan, which is spread across the United States, Britain and France: "The family was brought up against Nazism. That leaves a ...