Today in Philadelphia, President Clinton will make his first campaign appearance with Senator Kerry since Mr. Clinton’s heart surgery – and the two will make an odd couple. For when one compares the Clinton presidency to the Kerry agenda, it’s clear that the two come from radically different positions within the party. If the two appear on the same stage, the more illuminating venue would be a debate.

“I believe it’s the middle class that needs a tax cut,” Mr. Kerry’s latest campaign commercial, released yesterday, says, echoing Mr. Clinton’s campaign promise of a middle-class tax cut. Mr. Clinton, however, abandoned that promise after taking office. Maybe Mr. Kerry will be able to explain to Mr. Clinton why a middle-class tax cut is a better idea now than it was in 1993, when Mr. Clinton and his economic advisers rejected it in favor of deficit reduction.

Or explain to the voters why he can be trusted to keep a promise that Mr. Clinton couldn’t keep. It was, during the Clinton years, the Republican Congress that finally cut taxes – and in a way, through a reduction in the tax on capital gains, that unleashed remarkable prosperity. The change was rigged not for class warfare but for growth and jobs.

“I’ll end tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas,” Mr. Kerry says in his latest commercial. What a departure from Mr. Clinton’s support for global free trade that creates growth both in America and overseas. It’s hard to imagine the NAFTA promoting Mr. Clinton campaigning against companies that ship job overseas. The commercial Mr. Kerry released yesterday sends a different message from the one he sounded in the third presidential debate, when he vowed “to lower corporate tax rates in America for all corporations.”

In another commercial released yesterday, Mr. Kerry says, “I will never take my eye off Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and the terror in Afghanistan. We’re going to hunt down the terrorists, we will kill them.” There, too, the contrast with the Clinton administration – which rejected four separate proposals to kill or capture Osama bin Laden – is telling. Mr. Kerry’s new television commercial speaks of “strong alliances.” But as president, Mr. Clinton clashed with Europe over its economic ties to Iran and American sanctions.

When Mr. Clinton sent cruise missiles in retaliation for Al Qaeda attacks on American embassies, he was acting unilaterally, without any allies. And when America and NATO intervened in Kosovo, they did so without the blessing of the United Nations. If President Bush had done this sort of thing, you can bet Mr. Kerry would be complaining about it as having failed the “global test.” A Clinton-Kerry debate would need a moderator. We’d be happy to volunteer, but a better choice would be the junior senator from New York.