When Bruce Springsteen introduced John Kerry to 80,000 Wisconsinites on Thursday, he said, "The country we carry in our hearts is waiting, and together we can move America toward her deepest ideals."

That statement, more than any other, sums up what Tuesday's election is all about.

After the contested election of 2000, George W. Bush was called upon to heal the deep divisions in the United States, and the man who ran as "a uniter not a divider" could have done that.

Instead, he and his vice president, Dick Cheney, set out to restructure the federal government in a manner that would aid their campaign contributors and corporate allies. They rewrote tax laws to benefit the richest 1 percent of Americans, they developed an energy policy that had as its sole purpose the enrichment of oil and natural gas industry firms such as Enron, and they began appointing judicial activists to the federal courts.

Then Bush and Cheney turned the grief over the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks into an excuse to launch an unwise and unnecessary invasion of Iraq. As a result, more than 1,100 American soldiers are dead, tens of thousands have been wounded, and this country's international reputation has been severe damaged.The America that George Bush and Dick Cheney have created over the past four years has nothing to do with the country we carry in our hearts. It assaults our deepest ideals. There is no question that a change of course is needed. But change is hard. Presidents are only rarely removed from office after just one term, and then only when a challenger makes a powerful case that he can correct the course smoothly and effectively.

We believe that John Kerry has made that case. His service in the Navy during the Vietnam War and in the movement to get our troops out of that quagmire, as well as his lifetime of involvement with international affairs, will serve him well as the commander in chief charged with cleaning up the mess the Bush-Cheney team has made of Iraq. His two decades of experience as a U.S. senator have made him better prepared than any Democratic presidential candidate in decades to build the coalitions that will be needed to address the health care, education and environmental challenges facing a country that has too long neglected these fundamental issues.

We enthusiastically endorse Sen. John Kerry for president.