"He declined to be prescriptive..."

Catching up with the news shows tonight, I'm struck by the snickering--on "Special Report With Brit Hume"--over that quote characterizing a response by John Kerry, which appeared in today's NYT in an article by David Sanger. Kerry had telephoned Sanger on a Sunday--something Sanger wrote was "highly unusual"--to accuse Bush of allowing "a nuclear nightmare" to develop in North Korea. In Kerry's words:

"I think that this is one of the most serious failures and challenges to the security of the United States, and it really underscores the way in which George Bush talks the game but doesn't deliver."

But will Kerry deliver? Here's Sanger's presentation of the Kerry response:

When Mr. Kerry was pressed about how he would handle the threat of a North Korean nuclear test if he was in the Oval Office, he declined to be prescriptive, other than to say that the issue would probably have to be taken to the United Nations Security Council. "Hypothetical questions are not real," he said, arguing that North Korea was a case for preventive diplomacy, and that Mr. Bush's "ideologically driven" approach had kept him from truly engaging North Korea. "The Chinese are frustrated, the South Koreans, the Japanese are frustrated," he said.