For the next nine months, the strategy is clear for anyone wanting something Americans are presently unwilling to dispense. The strategy is to hunker down -- to hold on just a little longer, what with the Betrayer-in-Chief maybe leaving. A landslide victory could ultimately enhance Bush's authority in the war, but such a victory doesn't seem exactly probable.

John Kerry -- the sphinx who voted for the Iraq war and against the money to fund it -- owes Americans, not to mention their allies and enemies, some explanations. What exactly would John Kerry do to secure the free world against Islamic terror-bombers and those who seek to make weapons of mass destruction? We don't find out much by cocking attentive ears. It's all: Throw out the guy who got us into all this!

Really? Throw him out and then what?

The Kerrycrats seem on the verge of a great blunder, namely, convincing the world there really are, as Kerry keeps saying, two Americas: one subservient to Bush but about to be turned out of power; the other flexible, trustful, naive.

The Democrat who might as well wear his medals on his suit coat -- Vietnam is the signature experience on his resume -- is sending potentially disastrous signals about his grasp, and ours, of what it means to fight terrorism and hatred. We can imagine he doesn't mean to do so. He is doing it anyhow, and there could be the devil to pay.