92 percent of Iraqis see Coalition Forces as occupiers. Two percent see them as liberators.

92 percent of Iraqis see Coalition Forces as occupiers. Two percent see them as liberators. Those statistics, needless to say, bespeak a foreign policy disaster. The United States has lost Iraqi hearts and minds, which has made it infinitely harder for us to fight the insurgency that threatens to plunge the country into theocracy or civil war (or both).

Bush largely ignores the substance of Kerry's critiques of the Iraq war. Instead, he turns the variation in Kerry's critiques into an indictment of his opponent's character. Rather than asking voters to make a judgment on the wisdom of the war, Bush poses a choice between Kerry's "flip-flops" and what he called last week in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, his "clear moral purpose."

But clear moral purpose only produces moral results when it is rooted in reality. And today, just as before the Iraq war, the Bush camp dismisses facts that intrude upon its favored view of the world. In this campaign, President Bush and his allies describe the United States of our dreams--an America always beloved by the people we conquer, an America that never fights mistaken wars and that never loses its moral way, either in Vietnam or Iraq. And, if Democrats dare point out where reality diverges--that the Iraq war was based on a colossal factual miscalculation and that few Iraqis still see it as a moral enterprise--they are savaged for not believing in America.

Behind the Bush campaign's defiant, happy talk about Iraq is a strange indifference to the world we are supposedly saving. It doesn't matter that Iraqis don't see us as liberators as long as we do. It doesn't matter that the world increasingly lacks faith in the United States as long as we have faith in ourselves. "I want you to know that I believe with all my heart that America remains the great idea that inspires the world," Schwarzenegger said in his closing crescendo. He may want to believe that. I do, too. But recent polls suggest that, while people around the world still believe in democracy, fewer and fewer see the United States as its champion. The only way to change that is by understanding why others don't see us as we see ourselves and by adjusting our policies so they better reflect our creed.

That, however, would require admitting that this president and this country are not always right. And that, according to Bush and his supporters, would be a sign of poor character.

The New Republic Online: Character Acting