(Shaun has already posted his thoughts on Kerry. Here are mine.) 

John Kerry has announced that he will not run for president in ’08. The Boston Globe has the story here.

There isn’t much I can add to what’s already been written — see Memeorandum here for reaction from around the blogosphere. All I wish to say is that I admire and respect Senator Kerry a great deal. He’s a good and honourable man. I came to support him enthusiastically in ’04, and I believe he would have made (and would still make) an outstanding president. He may not have run a great campaign, and he may not have been the most effective candidate, and he may not be the most inspirational of public figures, but he did extremely well against an incumbent (war) president who was relentlessly beating the drum of the terrorist threat at time when 9/11 was still fresh in voters’ minds and the Iraq War wasn’t the all-out disaster it has since become.

But it is probably for the best — for him and for us — that he’s decided to run for re-election to the Senate rather than to test the uncertain presidential waters for a second consecutive time. Basically, he stood no chance of winning the nomination, not with Edwards, Obama, and Clinton running, not with the memories of ’04 still fresh, not with Democrats looking for a new leader to take back the White House. Once upon a time, back in Adlai Stevenson’s day, it may have been possible to rise to the occasion twice, to win the nomination a second time after losing the election after the first time, but that is no longer the case. No one likes a loser. And, whatever else we have to say about him, Kerry lost.

Kerry’s time on the presidential stage, then, has likely come and gone. In the Senate, though, where he is likely to remain, he still has the opportunity to do so much more.