Terrorist attacks worldwide may have increased substantially last year, according to a story in today's edition of The Washington Post. Despite methodological concerns, a fair-minded observer must acknowledge the consistent uptick in the last few years of government reports on the topic.

The administration concedes that the war on violent Islamists requires engaging an ideological contest, not merely relying on military and law enforcement fronts. It has pursued this war for hearts and minds in a number of ways, including by seeking, at times, to spread democracy, and by engaging in a dubious mixture of public diplomacy and propaganda. The latter project, in its current manifestations and context, is widely acknowledged as being of limited value (although many hawks and policymakers appear unaccountably to support paying for favorable Iraqi press, which surely only decreases our credibility -- buying temporary support is not the same as earning it on the ground).

The former goal, spreading democracy, is noble, but incomplete, and the means by which we are pursuing it (military force, threats, and often unilateralism) are largely counterproductive to actual progress on the ideological front in the forseeable future. Islamists enjoy an uncertain but substantial base of popularity in the Muslim world; according to one scholar, many Islamist leaders have endorsed elections in the view that "they would be the first to benefit from an expansion of democratic freedoms, at least in the short term." Well, a lot happens in the short term, and as has been noted elsewhere, Iraq's emergence as a liberal democracy after 20 or 30 years of this horror could not help dead Iraqis nor offer adequate recompense for the lives ruined in the transition. In the short term and in the real world, Iraqis despise the occupation and jihadists are finding abundant training and propaganda opportunities in the chaos there. Al Qaeda appears on some level to have improved its ability or willingness to use mass media to communicate its message. This complexity hardly means the administration is wrong to seek democracy (indeed, it has been unjustifiably selective in its advocacy on this score), but it does mean elections do not do enough to advance pluralism and stability, let alone a friendly attitude toward the United States and the West. "Free people," and especially partly free people whose lives we've helped to ruin and barely helped to rebuild, will not automatically like us; it's a narcissistic and almost solipsistic mindset that believes otherwise.

To look at these trends and maintain that we simply need mto do a better job "making our case", or especially to maintain that we're winning, seems merely to underscore the need for a more conceptually sophisticated public and political debate about terrorism and safety than the president's vague and grandiose rhetoric permits. Sometimes, to be sure, he allows that it's hard work. But President Bush has yet to admit that you cannot reasonably assume you're winning the battle for hearts and minds when evidence suggests otherwise.

So C-SPAN is broadcasting Sen. Kerry's speech from yesterday, which coincided with the 35th anniversary of his testimony before the Senate against the war in Vietnam. He's saying lots of typical progressive things about the right to dissent, those who never wore the uniform, homeland security, and the like. Someone needs to call him out on the mistake he's making in the midst of these fine sentiments.

He's speaking forcefully, occasionally insightfully, but the guts of what he's saying is utterly, embarrassingly predictable. The problem with so many Kerry speeches is fully on display here: He speaks in an expectant staccato, designing almost every sentence to be punctuated by adoring applause; he's developing few arguments at any length and taking few if any real risks, but somehow still vaguely posturing as bold. He plays to the crowd so consistently that he can be almost be described more as following than as leading the crowd. This habit also means that whatever inspiration his listeners derive from his defense of debate, accountability, care toward our troops, and an aggressive war on terror tends to be shallow and short-lived. He did say, to his credit, something about "it's time for us to go" in Iraq. Better late than never, I know (and it's something his colleague Hillary Clinton refuses to say), but let's not fool ourselves about the fact that it is quite, quite late.

It would be a great thing, to be sure, if the parallels between Iraq and Vietnam, which Kerry detailed, could achieve even greater clarity in the public consciousness. But it also needs to be said that this message does not benefit from having Kerry as its spokesperson; it reinforces the sense that he is yet again cashing in on the heroism he displayed half a lifetime ago -- coasting, in effect -- rather than displaying it more broadly and consistently today in his current, elected role. Leadership today does not involve mere repudiation of the administration's foreign policy (even conservatives do that these days, in their way). Even if you think it's premature for the Democrats to put a detailed foreign policy template on the table when it just will be ruthlessly caricatured, your interpretation of current problems needs to be more substantive, more observant, and more interesting than a recitation of pleasing one-liners and conventional wisdom or an endless rehashing of generic historical analogies.