MANCHESTER, N.H. -- It is early in the morning when Bob Kerrey enters the American Legion Post just off Elm Street, but a goodly crowd is already seated on folding chairs spread around the scuffed linoleum floor.

"People are looking for a leader," a supporter is telling me as Kerrey walks in. "A Churchill."

But if people are looking for a Churchill among the men currently running for president, they better keep looking.

On the Republican side we have a known factor, George Bush, and on the Democratic side we have a group of major candidates with so little name recognition that they probably could not get a parking ticket fixed outside their home states.

But Bob Kerrey, 48, has a certain something going for him in this regard: star quality. Potential star quality, anyway.

You hear the questions being asked in the crowds at the gatherings where the Democratic candidates parade before the public like beauty queens on a runway:

"Which is the guy with the one leg?"

"Who won the Medal of Honor in Vietnam?"

"Which is the one who dated Debra Winger?"

The answer to all three is Bob Kerrey.

A senator and former governor from Nebraska, a war hero who lost his lower right leg to a Viet Cong grenade, he has attracted not only early public attention, but some very sharp staff people from past presidential campaigns.

They stand here now, along the back wall, arms crossed over their suits. These are guys who can organize a state or a nominating convention or a national campaign. Unfortunately, none of them thought to organize a microphone for Bob Kerrey this morning.

So he must address the crowd through a bullhorn, giving his speech a certain "come-out-with-your-hands-up" quality.

He is shorter and much slimmer than one expects. Though once rugged enough to become a Navy SEAL, an elite commando unit, he now looks almost frail. His head is big, however, and this helps him on TV. (Merv Griffin, the vastly successful TV producer, believes in hiring stars with big heads because they show up so much better on the screen. Vanna White and Pat Sajak have big heads.)

Reporters have been shadowing Kerrey for some time now, and the reviews have been mixed. It seems Kerrey has not yet fully learned the trick of hiding his intelligence, which may be essential if he wishes to become president.

Americans want presidents they consider smart or savvy, but not presidents who are too brainy or intellectuals. George Bush never impressed anybody as being an intellectual. Ronald Reagan was never accused of being too brainy.

Candidates who do not disguise their intelligence -- Adlai Stevenson comes to mind -- scare people and are quickly given negative labels. Which is why Kerrey is sometimes called "Cosmic Bob," just as Jerry Brown, former governor of California and also running for president, is often called "Governor Moonbeam."

It is a way we have of saying that people who have ideas or thought processes we can't understand are not really superior to us but just goofy. Such labels make the rest of us feel better.

This morning, however, Kerrey goes for what George Bush calls the "vision thing." (George Bush admitted during his 1988 campaign that he lacked a "vision thing." He got by on "Read My Lips, No New Taxes" instead.)

"I want to lead a renewal of America and be guided by the values of a great society," Kerrey tells the people. "With dignity and with values, we can create, produce and do marvelous things.

"Everything I've done good, I have never done alone. Everything I've done good, I have not done without reaching out. I ask for your help today. Will you help me today be the next president of the United States?"

The applause is warm, and Kerrey leads a march out of the hall -- he has an artificial leg and his limp is very slight; he has run marathons -- and over to the National Guard Armory, where five of the six Democratic candidates will speak.

There, Chris Spirou, the state Democratic chairman, talks candidly: "I haven't seen great interest among rank-and-file Democrats about individual candidates. People are more concerned about survival than about who is going to win [the Democratic nomination.]"

Exactly. But the candidate who can persuade people he can do something meaningful about their survival has the best chance of winning.

While other candidates have walked up to the lectern on the giant stage by coming out of the curtains behind, Kerrey walks down the long aisle in front, surrounded by screaming supporters who carry placards and chant his name. Ker-REY! Ker-REY! Ker-REY! "Right Here, Right Now", the big hit of the rock group Jesus Jones that celebrates the democratic changes in Eastern Europe, blares through the public address system. Kerrey mounts the stage and stands behind the lectern, looking at the cacophony below him.

He gives a sardonic smile. "This is a heck of a way to make a living," he says.

And there it is: His potential strength and his potential weakness. His strength comes from knowing that a large part of getting elected president is a game, a performance, a play to the crowd. And he is not likely to get swept up or disoriented by it. But his weakness is that seeing through the game is not the same thing as winning the game. A lot of candidates make that mistake. A lot are unable to use the game to their advantage.

After giving his usual stump speech in the armory, Kerrey goes out later the same day to the estate of a wealthy supporter outside Concord. Behind the main house, there is a riding stable and a hayloft. Up in the hayloft there are now about 50 people sitting on bales and sipping apple cider.

These are people who have worked for candidates in the past, they know how to knock on doors and use voter lists and raise money. These are essential people. And Kerrey's campaign has gone after them with vigor: They have gotten letters, phone calls, follow-up letters, follow-up phone calls, and even a videotape of the candidate.

Amid the pungent odor of newly cut hay, Kerrey moves among the people, chatting, wisely shaking the hand of a tiny baby rather than trying to kiss it (You try to kiss a baby and it cries. Always.)

Finally, Kerrey stands in front of the open loft window, his large hands crossed in front of him. He wears the same dark suit he has worn all day.

"I am motivated and animated by a different set of values," he says. And then he talks about some of them, some of the stuff from his standard speech, mentioning Vietnam, raising two children and being a successful businessman.

And then he goes into the stuff almost nobody understands, admitting it is "difficult for people to hear." It has something to do with "applying broadcast technology" to "interactive learning devices in the home" and apparently has something to do with fiber optics.

In the question period after, Kerrey sometimes gives answers in which there is something less than meets the eye: "We should approach education through our concern for children."

And sometimes more: "We put a huge amount of energy to make sure a 24-year-old flier over Baghdad didn't hit a mosque. We should use that same kind of energy to give each home a learning tool."

Whatever you want to make of that last answer, there is a mind at work there that is not conventional. And that may be Kerrey's hope or his doom.

After some mingling, Kerrey walks down the steep ladder to the stables. A horse is taken out of a stall, and Kerrey poses with it amid a crowd of supporters.

"Here you have a horse's head," he says, pointing to the horse. Then he puts a hand on his own chest. "And here you have a horse's . . ."

He does not finish the sentence and the crowd laughs. A photographer takes his picture.

Bob Kerrey knows that running for president is partly a game.

Now, we're going to see if he knows how to win it.