Senator Kerry asked America last night to judge him by his record. It’s a record that National Journal calls the most liberal in the Senate last year. And it’s one that’s characterized by flip-flops and reversals, as we’ve been noting on this page throughout the week. In his speech before the Democratic National Convention, Mr. Kerry explained his indecision as the product of a thoughtful mind. “I know there are those who criticize me for seeing complexities,” he said, “because some issues just aren’t all that simple.” But then the junior senator from Massachusetts proceeded to catalog a series of simple answers to all of America’s challenges.

First, there’s the war. Mr. Kerry’s position is that “the United States of America never goes to war because we want to, we go to war only because we have to.” But it wasn’t at all clear that we had to go to war in Afghanistan before September 11, 2001, though we now know that Afghanistan was the base from which Al Qaeda plotted its attack – and perhaps a “war of choice” would have thwarted it. The next president is going to have to be bolder in identifying threats to America, and pre-empting them, in a world in which terrorist networks collude secretly with rogue regimes. President Bush has laid out a vision of political reform in the Middle East, where Islamist terrorists are bred. But last night Mr. Kerry, when he spoke of Iraq, didn’t even mention democracy.

Second, there’s the world. Mr. Kerry says a new president would have “the credibility to bring our allies to our side.” This idea, too, is too simple. A new face in the White House won’t change the balance of power in a world no longer defined by Cold War alliances. The Democrats have lately taken up the mantle of realism in foreign affairs, but they are remarkably unrealistic about it. France won’t be persuaded to acquiesce to American pre-eminence simply because our president no longer wears a cowboy hat. There were differences of principle and national interest when it came to “sharing the burden” in Iraq and maintaining “strong alliances.”

Third, there’s jobs. Mr. Kerry says he will “close the tax loopholes that reward companies for shipping our jobs overseas.” Here’s the tax break he’s talking about: Companies can defer paying American taxes on foreign income when they don’t bring the income back to America. Corporate taxes in America are significantly higher than taxes in foreign countries, including those of industrialized Europe. If American corporations were forced to pay the higher American tax on foreign income while corporations from other countries only had to pay a lower tax, then American companies would have to raise prices and would lose market share to foreign competitors. Then we’d see companies going out of business. Mr. Kerry is avoiding the tough questions. Mr. Kerry’s plan to “revitalize manufacturing” won’t recreate jobs that have been rendered obsolete by technical change.

Fourth, there’s education. Mr. Kerry says his plan “treats teachers like the professionals they are.” But this simply avoids the problem of a tenure system that doesn’t allow principals to remove unqualified teachers from the classroom.

There’s also the problem of Mr. Kerry’s double talk. He says he would never “mislead us into war,” presumably a reference to Iraq. But Mr. Kerry voted to authorize the war. He says he would “appoint an Attorney General who actually upholds the Constitution,” presumably a reference to the Patriot Act – which Mr. Kerry voted for. He says “Our purpose now is to reclaim democracy itself,” but Mr. Kerry’s speech said nothing at all about our fight against tyrannies abroad. Isn’t it good that we liberated Afghanistan and Iraq? Mr. Kerry doesn’t say.

Mr. Kerry says, “We just need to believe in ourselves.” That’s fine, but off the point. The Republicans believe in America as much as Mr. Kerry. So where is the evidence that he will stick with the war?