The Democrats' 'Poster Boy'

His father, who traveled the state selling auto wax and other car-care products from his trunk, was a World War II veteran, and Cleland didn't want to miss his own generation's war. So he joined the Army and volunteered for Vietnam. "I never could do anything with my life if I hadn't passed that line and drank from that cup," Cleland says.

In April 1968, with his tour ending, Cleland volunteered once more. He ended up on a rescue mission in the remote village of Khe Sanh, where North Vietnamese troops threatened to overrun thousands of stranded Marines. Cleland's assignment was to help install a radio relay station. After ferrying in the equipment, he decided to oversee the setup, then have a beer with friends. He noticed a hand grenade on the ground. Figuring it fell off his belt, he reached for it. Cleland was less than a foot away when the grenade exploded.

"The blast jammed my eyeballs back into my skull, temporarily blinding me," he wrote in a 1980 memoir. "When my eyes cleared I looked at my right hand. It was gone. Nothing but a splintered white bone protruded from my shredded elbow . . . Then I tried to stand but couldn't. I looked down. My right leg and knee were gone. My left leg was a soggy mass of bloody flesh mixed with green fatigue cloth."

The explosion not only severed his limbs, it sent Cleland into a spiral of self-doubt and personal recrimination—"stupid, stupid, stupid," he chastised himself, over and over, for more than 30 years. Finally, a witness came forward and told him the grenade had belonged to another soldier, who triggered the blast by straightening the pin before it slipped off his belt.

Cleland was lucky to survive—he needed more than 40 pints of blood and spent 18 months in rehabilitation—and lucky to live the full life he has. Early on, a doctor told one of Cleland's close friends that just getting dressed in the morning would use up all his energy for the day. (Cleland already has exceeded the life expectancy for someone with such severe injuries.)

After spending time in a physical therapy clinic, he returned home to Georgia in June 1969 and moved in with his parents. He had "no job, no girlfriend, no car, no hope." Then, as now, campaigning became a part of his recovery.

Like so many of his generation, Cleland was heeding the summons of President John F. Kennedy, who showed how politics could channel that youthful desire to do good. Cleland had been swept up by the Camelot mystique during his Washington semester when he caught a glimpse of Kennedy and toured the Oval Office days before the president's assassination. But there also was a less altruistic reason for Cleland's career choice.

"Everyone used to introduce me and say"—here his voice becomes a bright sing-song—" 'Well, Max could have stayed home and collected disability compensation and de dah de dah de dah and instead he got out and whatever, whatever.' The truth of the matter is forcing myself to get out and run and introduce myself to people—even though I felt very embarrassed about not having legs and stuff—just doing it over and over and over, I kind of worked through a lot of those barriers and restraints. It kind of helped bring me out."

In 1970, at age 28, Cleland became the youngest person ever elected to the Georgia state Senate. Seven years later, President Jimmy Carter appointed him head of the Veterans Administration, where he expanded community counseling programs and pushed the federal government to recognize the human toll from the herbicide Agent Orange. In 1982, he was elected Georgia's secretary of state, and during his tenure he routinely won the highest vote totals of any statewide official.

In 1995, when a U.S. Senate seat opened up, it seemed like the chance of a lifetime, a career-capper in a state with a tradition of electing long-serving, deeply revered lawmakers. Besides, Cleland jokes, life in the Senate appeared to suit him.

He realized early on he "wouldn't jump on a Harley and ride off in the sunset [or] make a living as a track star. I had to use my mind and emotion and passion and conviction about what I believe in. In many ways that's the job of a United States senator."

Cleland won a close, hard-fought election, edging a millionaire entrepreneur who outspent him 2 to 1. Once he got to Washington, the Senate proved to be the best job he'd ever had, with freedom to roam the world and indulge his curious mind. His chief mission was "looking after the troops," Cleland says, and he relished his seat on the Armed Services Committee.

In some ways, though, it is the companionship and creature comforts that Cleland seems to miss the most. He never married, never had children. His apartment in the Washington suburbs was a classic bachelor pad filled with functional rent-a-furniture, down to the pictures on the wall. His true home was his Senate office, and he smiles describing his desk—the same one his political hero, Georgia's Richard Russell, used—"with my little pictures of Churchill, Roosevelt and the quotes I like. No carpet. Wood floor. Bathroom-accessible."

But looking back now, with the taste of defeat still sour in his mouth, Cleland wonders if going to Washington wasn't a terrible mistake. "I've had beaucoup doubts that I did the right thing, that I ever left a safe seat back in Georgia, where I was generally happy," he says, as another campaign day winds down. "I've felt several times over the last year and a half that I screwed up my life big time by running for the Senate."

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The announcer is earnest and anxious. A single piano chord sounds over and over. "As America faces terrorists and extremist dictators, Max Cleland runs television ads claiming he has the courage to lead. He says he supports President Bush at every opportunity. But that's not the truth. Since July, Max Cleland has voted against the president's vital homeland security efforts 11 times. Max Cleland says he has the courage to lead, but the record proves Max Cleland is just misleading."

For the first three seconds of the 30-second spot the television screen is filled with four boxes. Two show U.S. troops and military hardware. The one on the upper left shows Osama bin Laden, staring off-screen. The one on the lower right shows Saddam Hussein shaking hands with one of his generals.

Democrats say the ad, broadcast in mid-October 2002, was an unconscionable smear. "One of the two or three nastiest political ads of all time," says Robert Gibbs, who served as spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee during the 2002 elections.

Republicans say it was a tough but fair spot, and Democrats are just whining because they lost the race. "I'm sorry, it's politics," says Scott Howell, who served as media consultant for Saxby Chambliss, the Republican congressman who beat Cleland. (Howell did not, however, produce that particular spot. The consultant who did, Tom Purdue, declined to comment.) "If you don't want to get attacked on your voting record," Howell says, "don't vote that way."

In fact, Cleland had joined numerous Democrats in voting repeatedly against the homeland security bill that Republicans brought before Congress, part of a dispute over civil service protections that new federal employees would enjoy. It also was true that Chambliss—like President Bush—had initially opposed creation of a Department of Homeland Security before changing his mind. (The fact that Chambliss had never served in the military, thanks to multiple deferments, further rankled Democrats, who were joined by two Republican Vietnam vets, Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, in denouncing the ad.)

Although Cleland was favored heading into his reelection campaign, he always had been one of the more vulnerable Democrats in the Senate. Georgia, like the rest of the South, had become increasingly Republican since Cleland first ran in 1996. And although he split with fellow Democrats on several high-profile votes, including Bush's first tax cut and the resolution to go to war with Iraq, Cleland sided with his congressional colleagues more than 80% of the time. (His record stood out even more when compared with that of Georgia's other U.S. senator, Democrat Zell Miller, who repeatedly sided with Bush and has since endorsed his reelection.)