The Kerry campaign aides puzzling over why their candidate’s approval ratings are so much lower than President Clinton’s might take a look at the Wal-Mart issue.

Senator Kerry, who wants Mr. Clinton’s old job of president, has called Wal-Mart’s health benefits “disgraceful”and “unconscionable” and said the company exemplifies “what is wrong with America,” according to press reports. The Associated Press quoted Mr. Kerry as saying of Wal-Mart, “the way they treat employees is not fair.” Mr. Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, has been quoted as complaining that Wal-Mart “destroys communities.”

Mr. Kerry’s friends at the American Federation of Teachers, we learn from Michael Antonucci of the Education Intelligence Agency, adopted an anti-Wal-Mart resolution at their convention two weeks ago. The teachers union urged its members not to patronize Wal-Mart stores or buy the company’s stock.

Mr. Clinton, on the other hand, plans to take his book tour to a Wal-Mart in Fayetteville, where he will appear for a signing on Saturday. At least there’s one politician standing up for what is, after all, the largest company in America as measured by sales.

Mr. Clinton had his flaws as president, but at his best he stood for a wing of the Democratic Party that embraced free markets. He lowered trade barriers, making it easier for retailers to import low-cost products and pass along the savings to American consumers. He passed welfare reform, which added millions of new employees to the retail work force. He lowered the tax on capital gains, making it easier for companies to raise capital.

Wal-Mart is based in Mr. Clinton’s home state of Arkansas, so he should have a clearer view than many of what the company is up to. Mr. Clinton’s wife, Hillary Clinton, sat on Wal-Mart’s board of directors between 1986 and 1992, another rea son Mr. Clinton may be familiar with the company’s activities.

While there are no Wal-Mart stores in New York City, New Yorkers have their own financial stake in the company’s health. The city’s Employee’s Retirement System owned Wal-Mart stock worth $258 million, according to the most recent annual report of the system. Wal-Mart was also one of the top 10 holdings of the New York State Common Retirement Fund, which held more than $844 million of Wal-Mart stock, according to its most recent annual report. If the stock holdings don’t meet the city and state’s obligations to retirees, city and state taxpayers make up the difference.

If Wal-Mart broke any laws in the way it treated employees, it should certainly be held accountable. But it’s hard to gainsay the fact that the company is a phenomenal American success story. Much of the hostility to Wal-Mart is driven not by genuine concern for the company’s employees but out of contempt by wealthy, free-spending coastal elites for middle-American tastes and cost-consciousness.

It’s hard to imagine the Kerrys, for example, furnishing their townhouse on Louisburg Square in Boston’s Beacon Hill with goods from Wal-Mart. Or their mansions on Nantucket, in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., or in Sun Valley, Idaho. Mr. Clinton, on the other hand, is selling his book at Wal-Mart and seems, despite his newfound prosperity, to be the kind of guy who, like lots of Americans, would shop there.

“Democrats can’t love jobs but hate the people who create them,” Mr. Kerry said back during the primary battle before he flopped over in the course of his campaign. When it comes to Wal-Mart, Mr. Kerry is ignoring that prescription. He’ll have a tough time winning in November by campaigning against a company to whose stores a lot of regular Americans — including Mr. Clinton — are so loyal.