The three presidential candidates and much of the U.S. foreign policy establishment all favor presenting a “kinder, gentler” face to the world than President Bush’s, but both parties have opened big holes in their appeal.

For the Democrats, it’s union-pandering opposition to free trade, which will deny foreigners access to U.S. markets -- and vice versa -- and wipe out the benefits of the big increases in foreign aid that they advocate.

Democratic Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton are vying with each other to denounce the landmark North American Free Trade Agreement, a net boon to all countries involved, and Democrats in Congress are blocking the Colombia Free Trade Agreement despite it including labor and environmental standards.

Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, are mounting new efforts to embarrass Democrats -- and their own nominee, Sen. John McCain -- with restrictive new measures on immigration. Ostensibly, they are just designed to block or drive out illegal immigrants, but the GOP has done nothing to alter the impression that all immigrants are unwelcome in America.

Iraq remains a major political burden for McCain, with most polls showing that 60 percent of voters believe the war was a “mistake,” although polling also indicates increasing awareness that the McCain-backed “surge” is achieving results.

Almost daily, Obama and Clinton repeat the charge that McCain advocates a “100-year war” in Iraq -- a canard that McCain should have taken steps to correct in his recent major foreign-policy speech in Los Angeles.