President Bush claims that his tough, confrontational approach to the bad guys of the world has made America safer. But on his watch, the world’s most dangerous regime — North Korea — has openly declared that it is building nuclear bombs as fast as it can. It may already (experts speculate) have as many as a dozen, and it shows signs of preparing its first nuclear bomb test. Nukes in the hands of this paranoid, impoverished regime — which is also building long-range missiles and seems quite capable of selling nukes to Al Qaeda — represent a vastly greater threat to American cities than Saddam Hussein ever did.

It’s unclear whether any president could have prevented this, short of war. But it’s hard to imagine anyone doing much worse than Bush has done. Looking to the future, would John Kerry do better? The answer may turn on a blood-curdling choice: Would it be better to pin all our hopes on peaceful negotiations that seem less than likely to stop North Korea from building a vast nuclear arsenal? Or should we threaten — and, if necessary, launch — pre-emptive bombing attacks that could lead to another all-out Korean war and even the nuking of South Korea and Japan?