PRESTOPUNDIT -- A Good Blog at a Great Price. Guaranteed.

It's time John Kerry chooses between being a whiner and being a leader. His midnight performance Thursday and remarks at events Friday showed he's yet to get the difference in this campaign.

Americans do not want to hear Kerry's whining about being ``attacked'' and ``insulted'' at the Republican National Convention. Americans do not want to hear his childish claims that he was attacked first and therefore he now must attack back. Americans do not want to hear the Democratic nominee call the commander in chief during a war where American lives are on the line ``unfit for office and unfit for duty.''

They want to hear that he is as committed as President Bush to stopping fanatics from taking over American schools and slaughtering children. And if he has better ideas about how to go about doing it than Bush does, Americans want to hear those, too. For this is what we are facing. Anyone thinking the Russian school massacre couldn't happen here underestimates the lack of moral conscience which exists in the likes of al-Qaeda, Hamas and other extremists.

Partisan Democrats, with an air of intellectual superiority, sniff that terror is a tactic, not a cause. They do so to imply that President Bush and his supporters don't even understand the nature of the world's dangers, never mind the correct means to protect against them. President Bush left no doubt that he understands completely in his acceptance speech Thursday night. ``If America shows uncertainty or weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. This will not happen on my watch.''

We bet John Kerry would like to have his Thursday microphone-clutching performance for the cameras back given the Russian horror. His complaints about attacks on his patriotism (as opposed to the voting record critique we heard) would be merely annoying if played only against the backdrop of a political contest.

But the larger contest - between liberty and tyranny, between good and evil - is the challenge against which Kerry's and Bush's leadership will be measured. And on that score, Kerry's thin-skin and oft-used tactic of claiming he's forced to attack because of unfair smears is not only unimpressive, it's offensive. And it's about time someone called him on it.

Defining differences is what campaigns are all about. George W. Bush told the country in no uncertain terms what he will do in a second term. And he told the country how his beliefs and record differ from Kerry's. That's just what Zell Miller did. That's just what Dick Cheney did. That's just what Rudy Giuliani did. Stop whining, Senator, and start telling voters why you believe you're right and these men are wrong.