John Heinz is everywhere yet nowhere in the race for Pennsylvania's electoral votes. Taken by tragedy in a horrific plane crash 13 years ago, the memory of the U.S. senator who was my boss is daily invoked by the presence of his widow and sons as the second family of the Democratic nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry.

		Jeffrey Lord served as an aide to both Sen. John Heinz and President Ronald Reagan. He is now a writer in Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. (JLpa1@aol.com).

This is a difficult piece to write. As a former senior aide to Sen. Heinz, I know and have great respect and affection for Teresa Heinz Kerry, as do many Pennsylvanians. Yet as Sen. Kerry rightly says, this is a very important election.

The Heinz name is being liberally used in John Heinz's home state to influence voters who knew and loved John Heinz. But what did John Heinz himself believe? Yes, Heinz was the very embodiment of the vanishing breed known as the moderate Republican. Yes, he was a strong supporter of Social Security and the environment, and was routinely endorsed by organized labor. Did he agree with John Kerry on some domestic issues? Sure.

Yet there was another side to John Heinz. From 1985 until Heinz's death in 1991, the two men whom fate would cast as Teresa Heinz Kerry's first and second husbands sat in the Senate chamber together facing identical votes on the policies of Ronald Reagan to end the Cold War, and those of the first President Bush to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. There was no mistaking the sharp differences in the Heinz and Kerry approaches to national security.

John Heinz voted yes to Reagan's request to support the MX missile. John Kerry voted no. Reagan's space-based Strategic Defense Initiative that historians now record as the program that broke the back of the Soviet Union? Heinz voted yes, Kerry voted no. Reagan's request for an increase in the build-up of troops for NATO? Heinz "yes," Kerry "no." Reagan's decision to challenge the Soviet attempt to establish a base in Central America by supporting the Nicaraguan Freedom Fighters? Heinz "yes," Kerry "no."

The results are found in the nonpartisan publication Congressional Quarterly: On every single major national security vote between 1985 and Heinz's death in 1991, Kerry voted against the Heinz/Reagan position -- a position that most historians now record as the strategy that ended the Cold War and later removed Saddam from Kuwait.

Unless there was a change in Reagan's Cold War policies, Kerry warned in a March 27, 1986, speech comparing Nicaragua to Vietnam, the United States would "further isolate ourselves from our allies." Repeatedly citing Vietnam as a precedent, he asked his listeners to "mark my words" that the policies Reagan and Heinz supported would put America "in a much more serious predicament." Heinz disagreed.

But Kerry got it wrong. And this is precisely the same argument Kerry now advances about Iraq.

The last major national security vote that Heinz and Kerry faced together as senators was whether to give the first President Bush the authority to go to war to remove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. Heinz warned that America had to "show unambiguous purpose and unmistakable resolve." In an eerie foreshadowing of the Bush-Kerry debates, Heinz said those in the Senate who opposed showing "purpose and resolve" with Saddam -- and that prominently included Kerry -- were sending "mixed and confusing signals" that would confirm to the Iraqi dictator that "he had nothing to fear."

Heinz voted "yes" to removing Saddam. Kerry, again seeing another Vietnam, voted "no."

Everywhere one turns in Pennsylvania -- a state that overwhelmingly approved both John Heinz's and Ronald Reagan's stands on national security -- the Heinz and now the Reagan name are used in this campaign to support Kerry, whose national security voting record was the opposite of John Heinz and Reagan's Cold War policies.

Perhaps the best way to understand not only how far apart the Heinz and Kerry philosophies were on national security, but how well they did at grasping the same set of facts is to quote them directly from their respective Senate speeches on the subject of removing Saddam from Kuwait. Both were delivered on Jan. 12, 1991, with Saddam in Kuwait and a massive world coalition poised to remove him.

Heinz: "There is no doubt in my mind that if Iraq does not withdraw from Kuwait that the United States and our allies will go to war with Iraq."

Kerry: " I still believe that notwithstanding the outcome of this vote, we can have a peaceful resolution. I think it most likely."

One last time in their six-year debate over national security, John Heinz got it right and John Kerry got it wrong.