The two-term senator brushes aside any suggestion that he would consider leaving the Senate.
"It's very flattering, but I am not interested," Reed said in a telephone interview. "That's it."
He said he's focused on winning reelection to a third term this fall.
"At this juncture, I am trying to return as a United States senator because I think this is a fascinating job, a challenging job," said Reed, 58. "Over the last two terms I've discovered that if you work hard in the Senate and develop expertise, you can have some significant influence in a positive way on a lot of issues. . . . I hope I can serve the Obama presidency in that capacity."
Despite such disavowals, Reed's name has been floated in the media as a possible Obama running mate.
"Jack Reed has quietly emerged as a leader," said Democratic strategist Jenny Backus. "He's tough, but he gets along with a lot of people. He's a team player and he's a straight-talker. Nice is an underrated characteristic."
With little fanfare, Reed recently played a key role with Christopher Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and a handful of other senators who drafted a massive foreclosure rescue bill to help hard-pressed homeowners. But it is on the Iraq war where Reed has made his strongest mark.
The West Point graduate and former Army Ranger has emerged as one of his party's leading antiwar voices after having voted against authorizing the war.
Unlike many of his colleagues, Reed shuns the shrill partisan blasts and hyperbolic rhetoric that often dominate the war debate. He offers his views in a matter-of-fact way.
"He's one of the guys people turn to in a debate on the floor for a read-out of what it all really means when you scrape away the spin and the rhetoric," Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, said in a statement. "There's no artifice with Jack. . . . There's a quiet tenacity there under the surface."
Reed's low-key analytical style, coupled with his military résumé, give him more credibility on the war than most senators, said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist and Rhode Island native who has worked on previous Reed campaigns. The war looms as a major issue in the White House race.
