Senator John Kerry, the defeated Democratic candidate, has blamed his failure to unseat President George W Bush on the traditional advantage held by a president in wartime and his own failure to "connect" with voters. "I'm not going to lick my wounds or hide under a rock or disappear. I'm going to learn," Mr Kerry told Newsweek magazine in his first interview since the Nov 2 election. "I've had disappointments and I've learned to cope. I've lost friends, a marriage: I've lost things in life." He then pointed out that no sitting president had ever been defeated during a war.He disputed descriptions of his oratory as "soporific" but appeared close to acknowledging that he had not connected with voters. Mr Kerry was careful to avoid making any commitments about his future plans, but one former Kerry adviser told the magazine that he thinks he is the front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 2008. In the past month of the campaign Mr Kerry closed the gap with Mr Bush but he lost by two percentage points.