GEORGIE ANNE GEYER Dem nominee upholds mainstream values

WASHINGTON -- Repeatedly mentioned as THE theme underlying the Democratic convention last week was the question of whether a President John Kerry would make America "safer." The candidate tried valiantly to answer that question Thursday night and, by my lights, he did so quite elegantly.
But the incredible thing is that such a question should be asked at all. The mystery is why any American would even have doubts about the answer, given where we are as a nation after three years of this administration's war against terrorism.
Evidence of failures
Look first at a few of the recent findings on terrorism that relate to America's role in the world -- not intelligence secrets guarded in the bowels of the CIA or the Pentagon, but newspaper articles that any responsible American can easily access and understand.
The respected International Institute of Strategic Studies in London, for instance, recently published its estimate that Al-Qaida and its affiliates are now 18,000 strong across the world, many of them new recruits who have come out of the Afghan and Iraq wars. "Nothing suggests ... that Islamic extremism and terrorism have been eliminated in a single country," Anthony Cordesman, one of America's best and most reliable strategists, says. "On the contrary, new leaders and fighters have emerged."
Not even Bush Republicans will deny that the standing of America across the world has reached depths never before seen in history. Yet every serious study, such as the just-released commission report on 9/11, states that the war on terrorism -- really a war against certain specific types of radical Islamists -- can only be addressed by a common political, economic and intelligence policy that America must embark upon with other countries across the globe.
Iraq? Pre-election meetings were just put off because of increased violence, which is taking the new and innovative (and expected) form of militants capturing guest workers from vulnerable countries such as the Philippines. Afghanistan remains starkly unstable. Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports that war-torn West Africa is becoming a base for Al-Qaida for the first time, at least a third of Pakistan is held by the Taliban, and as attacks increase inside Saudi Arabia against both foreign workers and Saudis, the "tough" response of the Bush administration is to warn Americans to go home.
Military preparedness falters
Wars are fought -- and eventually won or lost -- by the spirit of the country and the willingness of a nation's people to fight and to persist (as, for instance, John Kerry did, in contrast to the war records of Bush and his cronies).
But the indicators here are not good, either. While many Americans are caught up in the pugnacious spirit of this administration, military spirits are down. Pentagon officials recently reported, again quite openly, that the Army's pool of future recruits has dwindled to its lowest level in three years, under the bitter situation within Iraq and the animus against the American occupation.
And The Washington Times just reported that the Army's commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq are draining infantry officers from combat-ready companies and battalions all across the world, while American governors are increasingly desperate that the call-ups of the National Guard and Reserves are leaving states without the manpower to guard prisoners, fight fires and police the streets -- etc.
Kerry defines strength
But look at the very different picture of strength, personal and national, that John Kerry outlined Thursday night. "In these dangerous days," he said in his speech, "there is a right way and a wrong way to be strong. Strength is more than tough words. After decades of experience in national security, I know the reach of our power, and I know the power of our ideals."
When you come right down to it, John Kerry was only speaking in the way that your average, responsible Republican used to talk: You balance military strength with alliances with friendly countries, you use politics and economics to back up military force, and you work intelligently to institutionalize the world in the patterns the Western world has struggled to develop and to honor.
If you think candidate Kerry is somehow far out, as the Republicans are trying to paint him, listen to his other words -- and ponder how strange it is that an American presidential candidate should even have to voice them:
"I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war," he said Thursday in Boston. "I will have a secretary of defense who will listen to the best advice of our military leaders. And I will appoint an attorney general who actually upholds the Constitution of the United States."
Ladies and gentlemen, such points as these should be taken for granted in America -- they WERE taken for granted before the odd radicalism of the Bush administration, with its neoconservative casualness about historic American principles. That they need to be repeated now, and in such a forceful manner, tells us how far out the core of the Republican Party -- which used to be the party of sanity, fiscal responsibility and caution in the world -- has really moved.
Democrats claim mainstream
But something else has moved here, too. What last week in Boston showed us was how far back to sanity, to fiscal responsibility and to cautious leadership in the world the Democrats have moved. Our country's memories have been of a Democratic Party of the '60s cultural revolution, of multicultural education and of far left thinking, outside the American mainstream.
Today, ironically, it is the Republicans who are outside the mainstream of historic American principles.
Will this work for the Democrats? There is still the real possibility that George W. Bush, despite all the rampant and obvious failures of these last three years, can be re-elected -- if only because, once you get them into a war Americans hate to back out, and because many Americans obviously feast on the "Bring 'em on" mentality. But at least the discussion has begun.
Universal Press Syndicate