I agree with you that kudos go to Kerry IF he really means that prizes should be taken a lot more seriously from now on as a govt. procurement mechanism. However, I've read that he has accepted more soft money than any other Senator. Most forms of it are now banned, but major aerospace contractors can still help him. What's more likely: that he'd bite the hand that feeds (or at least fed) him, or that he'd embrace a paradigm shift that could annoy the civil service labor unions? The ones at NASA are embracingly Kerry quite aggressively, as:

http://www.spaceprojects.com/bureaucrats

shows. Kerry often changes his message and his mind, and I don't see that prizes would be any different if he were elected :-(