…How Bush Lost
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

President Bush’s “loss” in Thursday’s debate wasn’t all the result of the moderator’s bias and Senator Kerry’s dissembling. Mr. Bush, the candidate whose strong suit is supposed to be his consistency and strength in leadership against extremist Islamic terror, was forced in the debate to defend his dealings with Iran and North Korea. He hasn’t made it easy for himself.
Mr. Bush, after all, has handled both Tehran and Pyongyang with essentially the same flawed approach that Mr. Kerry proposed to handle Iraq – multilateral negotiations and the United Nations. Mr. Kerry’s proposed approach on both Iran and North Korea is even weaker that Mr. Bush’s, so the president’s own weakness is far less devastating than it otherwise might be. For example, Mr. Kerry during the debate proposed giving American nuclear fuel to the Iranians, who sit on vast petroleum reserves. That’s a trust game that could go wrong in a mushroom cloud.
The fact is that Mr. Kerry has been arguing an appeasement line with regard to Tehran, one he sketched out in its shameful detail at the Council on Foreign Relations. Yet each time Mr. Bush is asked about Iran and North Korea, his answers underscore that, three years after September 11, he has failed to confront these two of the three members of the Axis of Evil. Each time he defends his course in respect of these two Axis countries, he undercuts his argument against Mr. Kerry’s proposed course on Iraq. Mr. Bush’s case for dealing with Iraq without the French and Germans is weakened when he lectures Mr. Kerry on how we can’t deal with North Korea without working together with the Red Chinese.
These problems aren’t all exactly alike, of course, and there may be some role for the Chinese camarilla to play in pressing Pyongyang. Overall, though, we’d much prefer to see the Bush administration’s Iran and North Korea policies brought in line with its Iraq policies than its Iraq policies brought in line with its Iran and North Korea policies. That doesn’t necessarily mean an American invasion in either place, but it does mean an emphasis on spreading freedom and democracy rather than dithering diplomatically while a threat gathers.