Bush can take heart from support in N.Y.

This column is being written before we have heard George W. Bush on Thursday night telling us why he should lead the nation for another four years.

But from the first hours of the Republican National Convention in New York, it was clear how the candidate was positioning himself.

He is the bold, wartime president who should be returned to office to prosecute a war against terrorism that is ongoing.

He is the upbeat president who, like Ronald Reagan before him, dwells more on what is right and promising about America, than what is wrong with it.

He is the president presiding over a recovering economy that, managed with "compassionate conservatism," will bring jobs and greater prosperity to all Americans.

Though the Republican Party proclaims it has created a tent big enough to embrace voters of diverse viewpoints, this is a message targeted especially at the 8 percent to 10 percent of voters undecided so far in this presidential election campaign. Utah will go for Bush, and Massachusetts is Kerry country, and neither man can do anything about such states and voters whose ballots are a foregone conclusion. But the independent voters in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania will decide whether Bush or Kerry for the next four years will direct the war on terrorism, will manage U.S. foreign policy, will attempt to set the moral tone for the country, will bring a liberal or conservative philosophy to the management of an economy on the upswing.

The Republicans are seeking to position Sen. Kerry as a man who talks more about the past than the future, and a man who, as John McCain charged on the first night of the convention, "has failed to explain what he, as commander-in-chief, would do in Iraq," and as Rudy Giuliani similarly declared "has no clear and precise vision."

Sen. McCain, who has shunned exploiting his own heroism during years of torture in a North Vietnamese prison, paid tribute to President Bush's "moral courage and firm resolve" in the fight against terrorism and described the war to bring freedom to Afghanistan and Iraq as a "noble mission." As a result of Bush's determination, said McCain, America was safer since 9/11/2001, but not safe. Americans, he declared, were still "closer to the beginning rather than the end of this fight" against terrorism but "love is greater than hate, and freedom always triumphs over tyranny."