Sen. John Kerry offers leadership and a compelling vision to guide America through crises at home and around the globe

Any presidential election involving an incumbent is as much a referendum on the successes and failures of that incumbent as it is about his opponent. Has the president fulfilled his promises? Is the country moving forward? Has he dealt with crises foreign and domestic in ways that show good judgment as to America's best interests and how to further them?

Each voter who enters the booth on Nov. 2 will cast his or her ballot with such questions in mind. The News & Observer today gives Democrat John Kerry its editorial endorsement for president, in the belief that the senator from Massachusetts does have the necessary strength of judgment and character, and that he offers better, more thoughtful, more progressive ideas for how the country should face a multitude of challenges.

Bush's best hour

President Bush certainly showed effective and strong leadership following the national crisis that struck nine months after he took office. When the United States was attacked by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001, the president's aggressive response directed against the followers and collaborators of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan was on the mark.

Then, when the president ordered the invasion of Iraq, the American people rallied behind him. They believed, as Bush told them, that Saddam Hussein posed an unacceptable threat because he had weapons of mass destruction and could have brought those weapons to bear as part of some international conspiracy of terrorism, or simply to further his own brutal aims of dominance.

As is now painfully obvious, the intelligence on which the rationale for war largely was based was wrong -- and the president was slow to acknowledge that. The theory of the benefits of establishing a free and democratic Iraq sounds good in the abstract, but simply may not be feasible at an acceptable price given some of the poor decisions made along the way. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden is free, and the terrorist threat lingers still.

Here at home

It's understandable that the president has been preoccupied with foreign matters, but his domestic policies have been abysmal, and he seemed to squander the good will and unity that existed after 9/11 on a divisive right-wing agenda. He backed huge tax cuts, chiefly benefiting the wealthiest Americans. His rationale was economic stimulus. But those cuts, along with war expenses amid a slumping economy, have turned a budget surplus into a massive budget deficit.

The president can point to some progress on the environmental front, but it must be weighed against backsliding that seems to cater to business pressure. His "No Child Left Behind" education program would hold schools to higher standards, but the White House hasn't backed it up by insisting on enough money.

Bush simply hasn't kept that most important promise of being a "uniter." He appears to be dominated by neo-conservative advisers and those with a no-compromise, hard-right ideology. So far as that list of questions voters will be considering, the president just doesn't pass the test.

Kerry's way

John Kerry is a decorated Vietnam combat veteran, a former prosecutor, for 20 years in the Senate a hard-working lawmaker with an independent streak.

Kerry has blistered Bush convincingly on Iraq policy. The senator says it was flawed from the start, in that it proceeded from a mistaken assessment of the danger posed by Saddam, and that it was not planned well enough to avoid the inevitable difficulties of securing the peace.

He finds the president culpable for having alienated many countries that might normally have helped the U.S. effort. He says he would try to restore those bonds even now, so that the costs and responsibilities for the orderly rebuilding of Iraq could be shared, and he makes sense when he says he believes a new president would have a better chance of doing it.

Kerry is mindful of how thin U.S. military forces are stretched, and he advocates increasing the number of men and women in uniform. He has some firm ideas about reorganizing the deployment of American troops that would avoid instituting a draft, and he would accelerate the training of Iraqi citizens to secure their homeland. He inspires confidence with his vision for how this country should proceed in a dangerous world.

His domestic objectives include guaranteeing health care for all children, protecting Medicare and Social Security without reducing benefits or the folly of privatization, environmental initiatives that will protect coastlines and finite wonders of nature from oil and gas drilling, tax cuts for the middle class and expansion of college-going opportunities for their children. All are areas in which George W. Bush has fallen short.

Both John Kerry and his running mate, North Carolina's Senator Edwards, have not campaigned as driven by ideology, but by principle.

That is the profile of a president.