Senator Kerry will go to Boston this week to try to repair the fact that, despite all the campaigning so far, most Americans don’t know much about the man who is about to receive the Democratic Party’s nomination for the presidency. A Time magazine poll over the weekend disclosed that only 29% of those surveyed know a “great deal” about Mr. Kerry, while 67% know a great deal about President Bush. A similar poll, conducted last week by the Los Angeles Times, reported that one-third of registered voters don’t know Mr. Kerry well enough to decide whether he would make a better president than Mr. Bush.

Repairing this will be no small task for a party — and a candidate — that has been trying to attack Mr. Bush from all sides. Most delegates to the Democratic convention oppose the war in Iraq, but their party’s platform charges that the Bush administration “did not send sufficient forces into Iraq to accomplish the mission.” Mr. Kerry has all too typically advanced both positions. During the first Democratic primary debate, the Massachusetts senator said, “I think it was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein, and when the president made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm him.”

Back in Iowa, Mr. Kerry chided Governor Dean for saying America was not safer after the Iraq war: “Those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein and who believe today that we are not safer with his capture don’t have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected,” he said. Mr. Kerry echoed the president’s justification for the war: “We are safer with the capture of a man who wanted to build weapons of mass destruction and who actually had them and used them at one point in time,” he told Tim Russert of NBC.

Though Mr. Kerry believes the removal of Saddam made America safer, he has sought to convey an impression that he would not have removed Saddam. “If I were president, we would not be in Iraq today,” he told Rolling Stone on December 2, “we would not be at war.” He has also said that Mr. Bush’s Iraq policy made America less safe by “creating more terrorists.”The 9/11 Commission has just disputed the idea that the Bush administration has endangered America.”We do believe we are safer today than we were on 9/11,” Governor Kean said on presenting its report. “But we are not safe.”

Both halves of Mr. Kean’s statement present sharp challenges to the junior senator from Massachusetts. He will have to prove his mettle against a war president with a proven record of protecting American security and also provide a reasonable alternative to that president in a security environment that continues to be dangerous and threatening. Voters will need to hear an answer from Mr. Kerry and his party this week. If the Democrats had held the White House for the past four years, would Saddam still be in power? Mr. Kerry has yet to provide a clear answer, except to hint the answer is yes.

Other issues obtain. As a senator, Mr. Kerry voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 and said the agreement “recognizes the reality of today’s economy.” During the primaries, however, Senator Edwards campaigned for protection and pulled Mr. Kerry along. “If it were before me today,” Mr. Kerry told the Hartford Courant in respect of NAFTA, “I would vote against it because it doesn’t have environmental or labor standards in it.” Mr. Kerry started palavering about “fair trade” and said he would veto the Free Trade Area of the Americas and the Central American Free Trade Agreement absent stronger labor and environmental standards.

Mr. Kerry also voted for the No Child Left Behind Act, which he now claims makes “a mockery of the words ‘no child left behind.'”He voted for the Patriot Act, but now denounces it for imposing “restrictions on Americans’ basic rights.” He once denounced affirmative action as “an inherently limited and divisive program.” Now he’s pledged to defend it. The senator voted against the Defense of Marriage Act but now insists he’s with the majority of the country that opposes gay marriage. He has championed abortion rights but asserts that life begins at conception. He recently flip-flopped on the question of taxation of dividends.

As Mr. Kerry heads to Boston, we think of the catastrophe of Los Angeles, where Vice President Gore, after selecting, in Senator Lieberman, a candidate who suggested he would run to the center, suddenly veered off toward left field. What a contrast to the successful democratic nominees in recent years, Presidents Clinton and Carter, who gained the White House by distancing themselves from the liberal establishment of the Democratic Party. Mr. Kerry seems to be moving in the opposite direction. If Mr. Kerry can signal that his flip-flopping has come to an end and chart a centrist course, he’ll emerge from Boston stronger than before.