Why the Old Labels Don't Stick

Liberals have a few worries of their own when it comes to Kerry. He vows to continue a war in Iraq that many of them opposed. He's against gay marriage and says he will cut any new spending programs if necessary to balance the budget. He reminds voters he was an altar boy, shoots defenseless geese in Ohio and is very close to Bill Clinton's economic adviser, Robert Rubin, a man Wall Street loves. In foreign policy Kerry also strikes a traditionalist tone that is not out of place among old-school, Powell-style Republicans. He says he will go back to our old alliances and increase troop levels worldwide by 40,000.

There are times when Kerry seems as if he's promising a return to the foreign policy of the first President Bush rather than that of the radical son. He's less radical than his opponent on Social Security (he says he'll leave it alone, while Bush wants to reform it). He will leave Roe v. Wade in place, and he will undo Bush's fusion of government money with religious charitable groups. Whatever else Kerry is running as, it's not as a radical. In fact, Kerry seems the more conservative figure. In the debates, he was calmer, cooler and less prone to rapid personality shifts. It was Bush who seemed like the fidgety usurper. But style reflects substance. It's Bush who has radically recast the G.O.P. as a Big Government, religiously motivated tool for transforming the world. Kerry has merely campaigned on a return to Clinton-era centrism in domestic policy and old-Republican realism in foreign policy.

The question we face in this election is therefore a truly befuddling one: In a world in crisis, is there a greater risk in Bush's radicalism or Kerry's conservatism? And what do right and left mean anymore, anyway? •