It would be good for voters if both John Kerry and President George W. Bush would condemn all negative ads by so-called 527 groups and instead begin to focus on the more serious issues facing America. It probably won't happen because the independent groups named for a section in the tax code that permits their operation as shadow political partisans provides a useful buffer between the candidate and the negative ads the 527s tend to run.

In recent days, controversy has been swirling around anti-Kerry ads run by a 527 group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which challenges Kerry's performance during his three months in the late 1960s in Vietnam.

Earlier, left-leaning 527 groups, notably MoveOn.org, funded by liberal groups and billionaire investor George Soros, ran attack ads against President Bush, comparing him to Adolph Hitler.

The emergence of the unaccountable 527 groups appears to be a direct result of campaign finance reform legislation passed in 2002 by Congress in the form of the McCain-Feingold bill.

It should not be surprising that incumbent politicians in Congress created a new and improved campaign finance law that provides huge loopholes for unregulated campaign funding and negative ads. The steady downward spiral of presidential campaign ads has accelerated with congressional efforts to "take the money out of politics" through McCain-Feingold.

Bush, pressured to condemn the latest anti-Kerry ads, did so vaguely and suggested that all ads from all 527 groups should be condemned and stopped.

Though Kerry and the Democratic Party chose to focus the recent Democratic National Convention almost entirely on Kerry's brief wartime experience, the frustration over the recent negative Swift Boat ads might help to finally shift the debate to more important issues. When pressed on the ads, Bush was correct to note that "Kerry served admirably and ought to be proud of his record . . . we ought to be looking forward, not backward."

Nobody other than Kerry himself knows exactly what happened during his three to four months in Vietnam some thirty years ago. Pursuing that controversy further is unlikely to provide any useful information for voters. But a more careful examination of Kerry's 20-year career in the U.S. Senate would be helpful in illustrating for voters his priorities and leadership traits. A discussion of Kerry's two-decades of Senate service seems to have been deliberately and completely obscured by promotion of his brief time in Vietnam. His Senate career was nearly invisible during the Democratic convention and his voting record and legislative accomplishments have so far not been talked about in this campaign.

Whatever happened during Kerry's several months in Vietnam does not compare with either the World War II experiences of former Sen. Bob Dole or Sen. John McCain's five brutal years in a Vietnamese prison camp. Yet neither of these men positioned their powerful wartime stories as the dominant theme in their failed presidential bids.

The current controversy over Kerry's Vietnam experience will not be resolved. It is time to leave the issue behind and more forward to what the senator has done since that time and what he wants to do if elected president in November.

The country faces many serious issues, including: terrorism, war in Iraq, mounting budget deficits, domestic job creation, a continuing health-care crisis (including accessibility, drug costs and malpractice insurance rates), perennially rising tuition costs and global trade issues. There is no shortage of issues to debate and flesh out differences - spending time on what happened or didn't happen 30 years ago is fodder for cable's talking heads, but a waste of time for most Americans.

Both candidates should condemn the 527 attack ads, as Bush has now done. But even with Kerry and Bush speaking publicly against the 527 groups' efforts, it is unlikely they will curtail their efforts to influence the election.

Despite the probability that negative ads will continue, voters and the media should press for more discussion of Kerry's Senate achievements and what each candidate proposes for the serious challenges facing America.