After all the controversies over swift boats and National Guard records, we are finally getting to a real issue in this presidential campaign.

"We must have a great and honest debate on Iraq," John Kerry said on September 20, when he announced his four-point plan for resolving the situation there. Kerry is arguing for changing course in Iraq. "If we do not change course," he said, "there is the prospect of a war with no end in sight."

President Bush argues that in the face of difficulty, the United States must instead stay the course. "The proper response to difficulty is not to retreat," Bush told the United Nations General Assembly last week. "It is to prevail."

Kerry's objective is to maximize his differences with Bush on the war. "We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure," the Democratic nominee said. Bush scoffed at that notion, saying, "It's hard to imagine a candidate who is running for president who prefers the stability of a dictatorship to the hope and security of democracy."

But the prospects for democracy in Iraq look shaky. Kerry's response to the difficulties in Iraq is to chart a new course—one with more support from other countries. The very week that Bush addressed the U.N., Kerry called on Bush to "convene a summit meeting of the world's major powers and of Iraq's neighbors." Bush's response? He contended that's what he was doing when he called on "the U.N. and its member nations" to "do more to help build an Iraq that is secure, democratic, federal, and free."

Kerry also proposed a timetable for bringing U.S. troops home: "We could begin to withdraw U.S. forces starting next summer and realistically aim to bring our troops home within the next four years." Bush called that approach unwise: "If we pull out of there early, Iraq will become even more dangerous."

The Bush campaign is aiming to minimize its differences with Kerry on Iraq: Why vote for Democrats if they are not offering anything new? Bush said, "My opponent has now settled on a proposal for what to do next, and it's exactly what we're currently doing."

But is it working? More and more Americans seem to be questioning what the United States is accomplishing in Iraq. Last week's Time magazine poll shows that a majority of voters (51 percent) agree with Kerry's view that U.S. actions in Iraq have made the world more dangerous, while just 39 percent say that U.S. policy has made the world safer. In early September, the two views were equally balanced.

The polls that matter in this campaign are not just those taken in the United States. Bush said at his September 23 press conference, "I saw a poll [showing] the 'right track/wrong track' [result] in Iraq was better than in America.... I mean, the [Iraqi] people see a better future."

Democrats are challenging that assessment. Kerry charged, "Iraq is in crisis. And the president needs to live in the world of reality, not in a world of fantasy spin." Some Republicans are expressing concern, too. Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said of the situation in Iraq, "It's complicated. It's difficult. A Lot of problems."

Voters see two realities. One is horrifying, with news of suicide bombings, kidnappings, beheadings, and more than 1,000 Americans killed. The other is hopeful. "We are succeeding in Iraq," Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi told the U.S. Congress.

Kerry has expressed astonishment at the Bush administration's efforts to portray Iraq as a success. "With all due respect to the president, has he turned on the evening news lately? Does he read the newspapers?" Kerry asked.

Allawi argued that the current reality in Iraq is an improvement—that his country is better off now than it was under Saddam Hussein. "Iraqi citizens know better than anyone the horrors of dictatorship," he told Congress. "This is a past we will never revisit." But what about the future? Allawi claimed that the insurgents in Iraq are becoming more deadly because they are more desperate. He said, "The insurgency in Iraq is destructive but small. And it has not [resonated] and will never resonate with the Iraqi people."

At least one reporter on the ground is dubious about Iraq's future. When a television interviewer asked The New York Times' Baghdad bureau chief, John Burns, about the Iraqi elections scheduled for January, he replied, "If you have voters lining up outside a polling station, what reason would these insurgents not have to drive suicide bombers right into the midst of them, as they do now into crowds elsewhere?"

Kerry argues that American voters have to assess the future of Iraq. "The president says that things are getting better in Iraq, and we must just stay the same course," Kerry said on September 23. "Well, I disagree. They're not getting better, and we need to change the course to protect our troops and to win."

The evidence indicates that Bush is developing a credibility gap on the Iraq issue. In the Time poll, only 37 percent of voters said that Bush has been "truthful in describing the situation in Iraq." A majority, 55 percent, said the "situation is worse than Bush has reported."

In most elections, American voters have to make a judgment about how things are going in this country. But in this election, voters also have to judge how things are going in a country thousands of miles away.