The Middle East isn’t the only region of the world that could use a dose of democratization. That was the message President Clinton sent yesterday by stopping in at Taiwan for a meeting of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy. The message was made even more emphatic by the fact that Mr. Clinton made his stop on his way from Red China, which is emphatically lacking in freedom and democracy. The Chinese communists reportedly objected to his visit to Taiwan, which the communists regard as a renegade province. President Bush has refrained from visiting Taiwan, even though America is pledged to arm Taiwan under the Taiwan Relations Act, and even though Taiwan is, like America, a free democracy.

As president, Mr. Bush has traveled elsewhere in Asia, including to Communist China on the mainland. Mr. Bush is smart enough to realize that his own administration hasn’t served him well if it has allowed Mr. Clinton to get to the right of him on the Taiwan issue. One way to set the matter straight would be by visiting Taipei while still in office. That’s something Mr. Clinton never did. The point is not to inflame communist China into a world war, but to mark the point that freedom and democracy are the measures by which America will judge its friends, no matter how powerful the economic or military forces arrayed in the opposite direction.