IT IS NO EXAGGERATION to say the future of national missile defense (NMD) hinges on November’s presidential election. This past July, Boeing engineers loaded the first ground-based missile interceptor into a silo at Fort Greely, Alaska; and according to the Washington Post, “five more are due for installation by mid-October.” President George W. Bush predicts the system will become operational before 2005. The next administration can either speed or slow this program, depending on how generously it funds NMD research and development. And the contrast between President Bush and Massachusetts senator John Kerry on NMD could hardly be starker.

Bush has cast himself as the heir to Ronald Reagan’s legacy: the president who will make the Gipper’s missile shield a reality. NMD was in many ways the centerpiece of his defense platform during the 2000 campaign, and he’s made it a priority while in office. On August 17, Bush told Boeing employees in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania, that the Alaska-based interceptor loaded in July marked “the beginning of a missile-defense system that was envisioned by Ronald Reagan.”