Even with the inevitable simplifications, distortions and reciprocal charges of flip-flopping, there was something refreshing about last week’s dust-up between President Bush and John Kerry over the president’s plan to bring home as many as 70,000 American troops now stationed abroad.

The argument was about the future.

It’s an axiom in the political circles that campaigns are always about the future. But this year’s presidential election is in danger of being hijacked by the past.

Each side has contributed to this backward-looking environment. Kerry has developed an extensive and detailed agenda on everything from homeland security to health care. But the Democrats, at their national convention last month, focused much more on his service in Vietnam 35 years ago than his plans for the next four.

Bush’s campaign has been even heavier into retrospective. On the campaign trail, the president has devoted almost all of his time to defending his decisions of the past four years and attacking Kerry’s voting record in the Senate. His television ads have struck the same notes. Until recently, the missing piece has been almost any hint of what Bush might do if re-elected.

This shift into reverse has now been accelerated by the group of anti-Kerry Vietnam War veterans called “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.” Amplified by talk radio and heavy coverage on cable television, their television ad accusing Kerry of misrepresenting his service in Vietnam is consuming the campaign. Suddenly, on the evening news, debates about the Mekong Delta are elbowing aside reports about Najaf; if you close your eyes, you might wonder if you’re listening to Walter Cronkite instead of Dan Rather.

Investigative reports in several major newspapers over the past week have opened gaping holes in the credibility of the first Swift Boat ad. Reporters showed that several of the veterans now criticizing Kerry’s wartime record in the ads had earlier praised his performance in interviews and formal evaluations.

The group suffered the most serious damage on its most serious charges. The group has challenged Kerry’s account of the firefight in which he won a Silver Star, but on Saturday another swift boat commander on the scene, William Rood, now a Chicago Tribune editor, confirmed the key elements of Kerry’s version.

Likewise, Navy records offer no support for the group’s allegation that Kerry won his Bronze Star by falsely claiming to have faced enemy fire when he rescued Special Forces Lt. Jim Rassmann during an engagement in the Bay Hap River in March 1969. Rassmann has always said he was under fire when Kerry fished him out of the river; The Washington Post found that one of Kerry’s critics, Larry Thurlow, also won a Bronze Star that day – and his citation likewise referred to enemy fire. Damage reports showed bullet holes in Thurlow’s boat.

The group is on more factually defensible ground in its second ad, which focuses on testimony Kerry delivered to the Senate in 1971 after he returned from Vietnam. In that testimony, Kerry repeated allegations from antiwar veterans that they had committed atrocities in Vietnam – charges that many veterans, then and now, felt slandered them all. Compared to the flimsy accusations about Kerry’s service under fire, this is a much more legitimate political dispute.

Yet by exhuming this argument from more than three decades ago, the Swift Boat veterans are virtually compelling Democrats to amplify their attacks on Bush’s choices during the same period. The more the right accuses Kerry of serving dishonorably, the more the left will stamp Bush as dishonorable for avoiding combat service altogether.

The past few months have demonstrated that these are volatile materials for either side to handle. At their convention, Democrats allowed speakers such as former President Clinton and former Georgia Sen. Max Cleland, a disabled Vietnam veteran, to jab at Bush’s National Guard record.

Democrats can’t like the result now that the Swift Boat veterans have so aggressively escalated the combat over the Vietnam era. But if the Swift Boat veterans’ offensive now inspires a full-scale Democratic counterattack on Bush’s record in the National Guard, and his decision not to enlist for Vietnam, the president’s campaign probably won’t be very happy either.

Obviously, politicians should have to account for their choices in life, and even more so, their records in office; presidential elections involving an incumbent always turn heavily on the public’s evaluation of his record. But campaigns must also make room for the question that most directly affects the voters’ lives: what the candidates hope to achieve over the next four years.

That question has been oddly peripheral to this election. Now it risks being swamped entirely in the wake of the controversy over the Swift Boat charges. For all the detail in his proposals, Kerry has never found a way to force Bush into a sustained debate over the next four years. And although White House aides insist Bush will provide steadily more specifics about a second-term agenda – and are insisting he will break new ground in his convention acceptance speech – much of what he’s discussed lately have been familiar ideas blocked in Congress.

The coming week offers an excellent opportunity to rescue the campaign from these musty arguments about the distant past. Today, the Census Bureau is scheduled to release its annual reports on the median family income, the poverty level and the number of Americans without health insurance.

This is the most important yearly report card on how the economy is performing for average families. It’s likely to show that far too many families are struggling. If the two sides and the media can tear away from a war that ended almost 30 years ago, maybe the contenders could explain how they will help hard-working families fighting to stay above water today.

Ronald Brownstein is a national political correspondent for the L.A. Times.