Senator Kerry appears to be an intelligent, rational person. Surely he would at least consider preemptive action on ambiguous information in the hypothetical case cited. Unless he is prepared to categorically reject such considerations, he has no principled difference with President Bush. His differences with the president are merely ones of case-by-case judgment calls and implementing skills.

It would be good if sometime during the election campaign Sen. Kerry were confronted with such a proposition. After all, this election campaign is going to be about more than individuals; it will be about first principles of governance in the age of terrorism. We know President Bush's first principles -- they are written by his war decisions over the last three years. The Democratic contender's principles can only be written in his words. The media should compel maximum precision in those words over the next nine months.

But regarding Bush's Iraq diplomacy, Senator Kerry has already provided some specific words at his speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in December. They are revealing. In the question period after the speech, a Newsweek reporter asked whether Kerry, who faulted the president's diplomacy, could have done a better job.

"Yes. Absolutely. Let me explain," Kerry said. The senator went on to say: "Now at the time, (the French and Germans) were pushing for a second vote. But there was a way through that path ... I don't think it took a lot of skill or analysis to understand that the politics of their populations at that time were not ready to move. And any president ought to understand the politics of other people's electorates ... "He then suggested we could isolate the French and German governments by co-operating with their delays for a little while.

Was Sen. Kerry being na? or disingenuous with that answer? Surely he knew that German Chancellor Schroeder had himself whipped-up anti American fervor to win his election. And France's Chirac -- riding a wave of anti-Americanism out of his own corruption scandals -- had already admitted the Iraqi WMD threat but categorically rejected an armed response. This was great domestic politics for both those European leaders. Sen. Kerry would have held American security hostage to fanatically anti-American French and German public opinion being cheered on by their cynically calculating leaders.

Senator Kerry's portentously delivered criticisms of President Bush's foreign policy sound credible to the credulous listener. But when one looks closely, his foreign policy strategies seem to be well described by Blanche DuBois' last words in the Tennessee Williams play, "Streetcar Named Desire": "Whoever you are -- I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."