here do we stand, two and one-half weeks after the terrorist attacks? How effective has the Bush administration been? I think the record is good, but with some serious shortfalls.

After early miscues, President Bush has set exactly the right tone: firm but measured. And he has made the difficult, essential decision not to rush into military action.

That we have not yet retaliated with force is frustrating to many, but wise. There was a real danger that we would strike back in anger, heedless of civilian casualties and their consequences for our cause. The president and his people now plainly understand the cost of getting it wrong.

The sense of deliberateness in our decision-making carries its own power in the world. So does the administration's recognition that the terrorist problem cannot be solved by force alone but will be a long struggle involving diplomacy, finance, politics. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, always reckoned a hawk, made just that point on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times the other day.

The administration's diplomatic performance has been first-class. Secretary of State Colin Powell successfully pressed Saudi Arabia to break relations with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and pressed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel to let his foreign minister talk with Yasir Arafat. At U.S. urging, Russia, Pakistan and others have agreed to join, in different ways, the alliance against terrorism.

But wise rhetoric and skillful diplomacy will not be enough to defeat what is an apocalyptic movement. If we want to do that, rather than just hold terrorism at bay with improved security, we will have to use military force at some stage.

There's the rub. Do we really have good evidence linking Osama bin Laden to the Sept. 11 attacks? If we do, how do we attack him? President Clinton had cruise missiles strike a camp where he was -- and missed him by an hour. If anything, he will be harder to locate and hit now. Americans may have to develop a tolerance for failure.

There is one other plus in the record: not the administration's but the country's. Attorney General John Ashcroft quickly produced a legislative package _ surveillance, detention of immigrants _ that would have done real harm to civil liberties. But both Democrats and Republicans in Congress resisted, and Mr. Ashcroft is negotiating. Democracy has worked better on civil liberties this time than it worked in the Civil War and World Wars I and II.

A critical need is to strangle terrorist finances. The administration has taken steps, but I doubt that they are anywhere near tough enough. We have to make banks abroad tell us who is moving the money around. We pressed the Saudis to break diplomatically with the Taliban; will we press them to give us the names of money manipulators?

Finance is generally a weakness of the Bush administration. Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill does not have the respect needed, abroad or at home. Tellingly, Congress has turned to Robert Rubin, President Clinton's treasury secretary, for economic advice in this crisis.

The terrorists aimed to injure us economically, and their attack has intensified a developing recession. The belief is widespread that we need Keynesian measures: a large-scale infusion of money into the economy. But President Bush has no one on his economic team strong enough to put that case together.

The president's greatest achievement, I think, has been to hold the country together behind a careful, patient policy. There has been an extraordinary absence of partisan ideology. Two large exceptions, in their egregious character, prove that rule.

Andrew Sullivan, a right-wing figure, wrote in The Sunday Times of London five days after the attacks: "The middle part of the country -- the great red zone that voted for Bush -- is clearly ready for war. The decadent left in its enclaes on the coasts is not dead -- and may well mount a fifth column." The disgusting diatribe condemns itself.

Then William Kristol, a leading conservative voice, used the op-ed page of The Washington Post to attack Secretary Powell as soft and disloyal to the president. To the contrary, as almost everyone else in the country has seen over these weeks, Colin Powell has been a strong, reassuring figure, giving crucial support to George W. Bush as he has grown into the presidency.