A blue state newspaper endorses George Bush.

"Am I blue?"

Well, the lyrics of that old ballad notwithstanding, the answer has to be, not exactly.

Sure, on that electoral map, Massachusetts is bluer than blue, according to the 1.8 million who voted for the hometown favorite John Kerry. But even here, more than a million voters turned out to vote for George W. Bush. We who labor on the editorial pages of the Boston Herald would like to think we had a lot to do with their decision.

Editorially the paper has long had a kind of love/hate relationship with the junior senator from Massachusetts. We endorsed him for Senate in 1990, but endorsed his Republican opponent in 1996. You could say we like keeping John Kerry on his toes.

Of course, when the chips were down before the crucial Democratic presidential primary in New Hampshire, the Herald endorsed Kerry on the basis of his experience--personal and political--especially when compared to his Democratic rivals. But we also sounded a cautionary note at that time that "Kerry as a presidential candidate remains a work in progress."

Six months later, a series of editorials that began running during the Democratic National Convention (held in Boston, let's not forget) should have provided some big, broad hints to our readers--and likely to the candidate, had he cared to listen--that all was not going well. Many of those editorials ran with a logo we developed of a John Kerry in profile "evolving" in shades of gray.

In fact, there wasn't an issue that John Kerry couldn't be found on at least two sides of. Of course, he was on so many sides of the Iraq war and money to fund it that even we lost track at times. (Of course, there was the classic Kerryism "I voted for it before I voted against it.")

Blue State or not, this wasn't what anyone should be looking for in a president. So when it came time to endorse, the only real question was how much time and space do we devote to why we didn't--couldn't--endorse our own senator. While traditionally endorsement editorials dwell on the winner of that endorsement, in this case, the Herald felt a certain obligation to explain why we weren't going with the hometown candidate.

"Kerry's shifting positions on the Iraq war are troubling;' the editorial stated. "But it's his 20-year record of voting to weaken this nation--voting against the first Gulf War, gutting intelligence and defense programs, and maintaining a long-held belief, even after Sept. 11, that terrorism is a law-enforcement matter that renders him unfit to serve as commander in chief.

"John Kerry, who has served this state well in the U.S. Senate is in his bid for the presidency simply the wrong man, in the wrong place, at the wrong time."

As for our comments about Bush, there was only one line that truly rankled Kerry fans--judging from our voice mails and letters to the editor that followed--and it was this:

"Certainly, both John Kerry and George Bush love this country. Both are men of good will, deep faith and vast intellect."

You see, Kerry supporters could not abide the notion that George W. Bush isn't some kind of fool who simply bumbled his way into the White House and for some inexplicable reason got to stay there. To put these two Yale grads in the same category was too much for partisans in the heat of this election contest.

And when I arrived the morning after the endorsement to find my voicemail box registering "full," I comforted myself with how boring it must be to, as the saying goes, preach to the choir.

Rachelle G. Cohen is editorial page editor of The Boston Herald.She can be reached at shelco@ bostonherald.com