“We are at war, and our security as a nation depends on winning that war. …We must stay on the offensive to find and defeat the terrorists wherever they live, hide, and plot around the world. If we learned anything from September 11th, it is that we cannot wait while dangers gather. After the September 11th attacks, our nation faced hard choices: We could fight a narrow war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, or we could fight a broad war against a global menace. We could seek a narrow victory, or we could work for a lasting peace and a better world. President Bush has chosen the bolder course.”

So testified Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, yesterday before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. One could call it the Rice Doctrine, but whatever one calls it, if Mr. Bush, in the coming presidential campaign, can make half the argument that Ms. Rice did yesterday, he’ll win the election in a landslide. She was composed, smooth, knowledgeable, persuasive, unflappable. Sober, yet optimistic.

Senator Kerry yesterday wasn’t gracious enough to acknowledge this. He instead repeated his allegation that “George Bush and the Republicans in Washington today have run the most arrogant, inept, reckless and ideological foreign policy in the modern history of this country.” Watching Ms. Rice on television yesterday, it was hard to see her as either arrogant or inept. A former top aide to President Clinton, Sidney Blumenthal, went even further, describing Ms. Rice yesterday in an article in Salon as “deceitful and derelict, an underhanded lightweight.” Ms. Rice held her own under tough questioning, proving herself no lightweight.

Democrats who attack her may find that their efforts backfire. That’s what happened yesterday. The Democrats had maneuvered for weeks to haul Ms. Rice before a public session of the commission for sworn testimony. Yet when she finally got there, she proved an extraordinarily effective spokeswoman for the president and his policies. And now the country will want to know what is the Kerry doctrine.

Certainly nothing the senator from Massachusetts has advanced in his campaign could be called a bolder course. He wants to fight this war by internationalizing it on the one hand and turning a world war into a law enforcement problem on the other hand. It may take some time to sort out, but the national security adviser is making the essential point — that our security depends on winning.