THE APPARENT gap between Dean’s public anti-war stance and his private hawkishness is symbolic of the policy divide between Democratic-establishment types like Albright, Berger, and Holbrooke, and the Democratic base of activists who work the primaries. It’s a problem that can be papered over, or even ignored, during most presidential campaigns. But not in 2004.

Heather Hurlburt, a former Albright speechwriter, wrote in a November 2002 piece for the Washington Monthly that the dovish members of the Democratic Party will damage the party’s viability in the future: " We will never ... regain credibility with voters on national security until we learn to think straight about war, " she wrote. " And we will never learn to think straight about war until this generation of professional Democrats overcomes its ignorance of and indifference to military affairs. "

The dovish base that turns out for primary elections is not the only thing Democrats running for president next year have to worry about. They also have to deal with the simple-minded Talk Showteriat, which flatly ignores the complex subtleties that underlie international diplomacy. Already radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly of Fox News, Joe Scarborough of MSNBC, and Jay Severin, locally, are calling for retribution against those Democrats who expressed criticism of Bush. Kerry’s call for " regime change " in Washington, DC, for instance, sparked an overheated, overwrought outcry from the GOP (see " Do As I Say ..., " This Just In, April 11).

So what should the Democrats do? Well, they have no choice but to return to their roots. And there is, in fact, a common doctrine by which most prominent Democrats appear to abide. Hurlburt terms it " advanced democracy internationalism. " The idea holds that the US should work as much as possible through the United Nations, or at least through multilateral alliances. If this is one of the foundations of the Democratic approach to foreign policy, then they have to promote it. They might even make a virtue of it.

Regardless of who becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, one foreign-policy issue that will come up repeatedly in the campaign is that the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive war is fundamentally dangerous. American voters might be happy with the results of the war in Iraq. But they may be apprehensive about the doctrine’s sweeping nature. Do Americans really want carte blanche to strike at Syria, Iran, and North Korea? Do they have the stomach for it? " There’s no legal basis for saying we reserve the right to go to war with any country that might threaten us in the future, " says Gardner. " When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, they used a similar argument. "

Then, there is North Korea. So far the Bush administration’s approach has been to talk tough and refuse one-on-one contacts with North Korea. The problem with this hard-edged stance is that the administration can’t back it up with force. Defense-policy experts estimate that North Korea would be able to lay waste to South Korea’s capital, Seoul, and to the contingent of US troops now stationed there almost instantaneously, were the US to launch a pre-emptive air strike against North Korea’s nuclear-weapons plant similar to the one Israel deployed against Iraq more than two decades ago. The Democrats, particularly Albright, may be at fault for forging a 1994 agreement with the North Koreans, which the North Koreans secretly subverted. But military action — while an option — means much more bloodshed than what we just saw in Iraq.

Indeed, the situation in North Korea presents a good example of just what kinds of opportunities and obstacles the Democrats face in the realm of foreign policy. Last week, the North Koreans indicated they might be willing to engage in multilateral discussions of the sort called for by the Bush administration. The Democrats can certainly co-opt this issue. Who, after all, is more in favor of multilateral engagement? The Democrats or the Republicans? Even so, this approach to foreign policy, while coherent, requires much more explaining than the Bush Doctrine’s with-us-or-against-us manner of conducting business in the world.

We’ve already seen what kinds problems lie in store for those who promote multilateralism. During much of the debate in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Kerry urged that something should be done to disarm Hussein, but that it was imperative to undertake such action through existing international structures and in concert with other nations. It was a complicated, wordy position that drew Kerry much criticism (see " Talking Politics, " News and Features, April 4). Bush’s position, by contrast, which can be easily faulted as too simplistic, is readily understood by more people. None of the Democrats has been able to devise a set of foreign-policy precepts as easily digestible as Bush’s. An anti-war candidate, such as Dean, could counter with an equally clear opposing vision. But then he would be open to the charge that he isn’t serious about national security. Even Dean himself — with the assistance of Sebright — is trying to combat that perception.

Going into the next presidential-election cycle, David Halberstam’s characterization of the foreign-policy establishment encountered by President John F. Kennedy in 1960 comes immediately to mind. " It feared the right ... it feared the left; it held what was proclaimed to be the center. " If the Democrats are wise, this is what they’ll do to defeat Bush and his contingent of hawkish policy advisers in 2004.

Seth Gitell can be reached at sgitell[a]phx.com