Last week Sen. John McCain, the Republican Party's almost-certain nominee for president, delivered an important address to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council on what would be his foreign policy if he were elected president.

The likelihood that Mr. McCain will be elected president and that his positions as expressed in his speech will become America's foreign policy starting in January 2009 is increased by the day as Sen. Hillary Clinton and her husband, the Roger Clemens of contemporary American politics, persist in their efforts to get back into the White House by damaging her rival for the Democratic nomination.

Mr. McCain's speech suggested that he would make some positive changes to the policies of President Bush that have been so costly to America's position in the world. At the same time Mr. McCain remains dogged in his attachment to pursuing the Iraq war that Mr. Bush started -- to the end of time if he deems it necessary. The Iraq war is what has put our country at odds with almost all of our allies and other countries that approach our policies with an open mind, ready to support them or oppose them based on their merits.

Mr. McCain's approach to foreign policy, with the Iraq war inevitably as its centerpiece, is like an alcoholic who tells you he intends to stop drinking as soon as he has polished off the half-gallon of vodka he is currently working on.

It is interesting the people whom Mr. McCain refers to in his talk. Apart from his father and grandfather, he cites President John F. Kennedy and President Harry S. Truman, both Democrats. The name "George W. Bush" never passes his lips.

He characterizes himself as "a realistic idealist." That could be acceptable: someone who has ideals, but is realistic.

His speech contained a number of telling points if one is looking for a new president who would rectify some of the foreign policy mistakes of the current one.

Mr. McCain speaks of the importance of the United States following the "rules of international civilized society." In principle, that could mean that we don't torture people, an important issue for him given his personal history as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He says we should close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, which is the epitome of the Bush administration operating outside American as well as international principles of law.

He speaks eloquently of repairing America's relations with its allies. The Bush administration has walked across our allies and criticized them publicly when they didn't knuckle under to what it wanted from them. Mr. McCain says the United States must be a "good and reliable ally" and stresses the importance of our global alliances. "Mutual respect and trust," he says, should be the hallmark of U.S. external relationships. America, he says, should be "a model citizen" of the world.

On the global level he shows awareness of current international and American concerns by citing the urgency of the problem of global warming and calling for a successor treaty to Kyoto. Speaking of regions, he put Latin America first, saying that the United States needs to assume "mutual responsibility" with Latin nations. He calls for a rather anodyne "political liberalization" in China, and in Europe, a strong NATO. (The Bush administration is currently trying to get NATO to expand unrealistically and to put troops into Afghanistan that it doesn't want to send.)

Mr. McCain seems to have a bee in his bonnet on Russia. He calls for the G-8 industrialized nations to add Brazil and India but to exclude Russia, which he calls "revanchist." Does he really mean that or did he misspeak -- as he did when his description of line-ups in the Middle East mangled Sunni and Shiite, al-Qaida and Iran? Does he really mean that current Russian policy is try to regain territory that it lost earlier?

Mr. McCain wants to eradicate malaria in Africa and reverse nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran. At least he doesn't threaten an attack on Iran. He sees America's "transcendent challenge" to be radical Islamic terrorism. That's more reasonable than Mr. Bush's "axis of evil" hate list of Iran, Iraq and North Korea. He is rather nasty about U.S. allies Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan (to the degree that it still is an ally), calling them "outdated autocracies."

His most unacceptable position, unless one supports the Iraq war, is the part of the speech in which he unloaded on what he sees as the lack of wisdom and morality in withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. He conditioned this throughout, stating his opposition to "reckless, irresponsible and premature" withdrawal, in a sense begging the question in a rather childlike formulation. Who wants to argue for "reckless, irresponsible and premature" withdrawal?

He says seeking withdrawal is to favor "a morally reprehensible abandonment of our responsibilities in Iraq." I hope that isn't a preview of his taking similar brain-dead talk-show positions in serious debates during the general election campaign.

Overall, though, the speech was relatively reasonable. Mr. McCain's "I detest war" and "I hate war" lines were clearly heartfelt, given his own experience. His calls for improved relations with America's allies based on mutual respect and trust and on our country becoming a model world citizen were very welcome.

There is, of course, plenty more to look at in judging the reasonableness of the foreign policy he would pursue. One important point will be whom he will have around him as he develops his foreign policy positions. It was not reassuring to see Sen. Joe Lieberman, the still ambitious independent and former Democrat, hovering around Mr. McCain during his recent Middle East trip. There are also reports that John Bolton, the Bush administration's never-confirmed ambassador to the United Nations and the mustachioed favorite of the loony right, would get a high post in a McCain administration.

There is still a long way to go, but Mr. McCain in Los Angeles at least gave us a useful foreign policy statement to start from.