JOHN TIERNEY, in an only-somewhat-tongue-in-cheek New York Times column Aug. 26, raised what ought to be – seriously – the first question in this week's presidential debate: "President Bush, both you and Mr. Kerry have been criticized for your conduct during the Vietnam War. Which of you served his country better?" There's a nice follow-up, which would lead right into the central issue of the campaign: "Mr. President, your opponent strongly opposed Richard Nixon's policy in Vietnam, and you didn't. In retrospect, who was right?"

Kerry is under a savage, unprincipled attack over his Vietnam record, and he needs to fight back. He also needs to make clear that the war in Iraq is both a foreign-policy and a domestic issue: it's about $200 billion – which could have been spent on education, public health, job creation, rebuilding Florida after the hurricanes, and, yes, public safety – going down a sinkhole half a world away. It's about 1,000 U.S. kids coming home in body bags. It's about a nation that's become less safe from terrorist attacks as Islamic fundamentalists enjoy the greatest recruitment boom since the Crusades.

The war is going horribly, and nobody outside of the Bush spin machine thinks there's much chance of it getting any better. Even in the swing states, those socially moderate-to-conservative parts of the country where both candidates are campaigning furiously, polls show support for the war is fading fast. Opposition is only going to grow over the next few weeks, as more dead soldiers arrive home in flag-draped coffins. If Bush is really going to "secure" Iraq in time for January elections, there will be weeks and weeks of brutal house-to-house fighting in cities like Fallujah, with thousands of U.S. troops killed or wounded – and tens of thousands of civilians caught in the crossfire.

So Kerry has to make a strong statement against the war – now, this week, at the first presidential debate. He needs to denounce not only Bush's "handling" of the invasion but also the entire concept of a preemptive attack on a sovereign nation whose population clearly wasn't clamoring for the United States to invade. He needs to say that – like the awful misadventure in Vietnam – this is a world-class mistake.

Yes, Kerry has been inconsistent on the war. Yes, he voted the wrong way on the measure to authorize Bush to use force. Yes, he's made himself foolishly vulnerable by repeating over and over that he would have cast the same vote again. But he can point out that his vote was widely understood at the time as part of a strategy to give the Bush administration leverage to pressure Saddam Hussein and was never intended to be a blanket declaration of war against Iraq (any more than the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution should have been a blanket authorization for a 10-year engagement that cost 58,000 American lives).

As filmmaker Michael Moore points out in a message he posted at www.michaelmoore.com, "Regardless of what Kerry meant by his original war vote, he ain't the one who sent those kids to their deaths – and Mr. and Mrs. Middle America know it."

Kerry also needs to remember that the real "swing voters" in this election may well be people who, four years ago, didn't vote at all. According to the Times, in swing states, new-voter registration among Democrats is far outstripping Republicans – and almost all those people are taking the time to register to vote because they want to get rid of Bush. Then there are all the young people who use only cell phones and thus don't get called by pollsters and aren't reflected in poll numbers. If Kerry can get those folks out to vote Nov. 2, he'll win the swing states easily.

But that means inspiring and motivating people who aren't used to casting a ballot. As the debates and the campaign continue, Kerry should talk about jobs and the economy (the money we've already wasted in Iraq could have created four million well-paying jobs back here at home). He should talk about the environment, and the creeping police state, and the Supreme Court (you want another Ruth Ginsburg or another William Rehnquist? Can we risk overturning Roe v. Wade?).

But he should also remind every draft-age voter what Vietnam was like for people who weren't as lucky as George W. Bush. That's a message that will hit home in every single state.