The other problem is balancing the goal of safety with everything else. As one of Ridge’s deputies puts it, “We can protect the homeland so much that we bankrupt it.”

For example, we are poised to spend about $5 billion next year on aviation security, so that every passenger is screened by a new, well-trained 45,000-person army of Transportation Security Agency screeners (a force larger than the entire FBI, Customs Service and Secret Service combined) and all luggage that is checked into cargo compartments is screened for explosives. That makes sense, especially given the fear of flying induced by the September 11 attacks. But what about trains and subways? There are almost –as many entrances to the New York City subway system as there are checkpoints leading to all the gates at all the 438 airports in the United States. And no one checks what anyone brings on to a subway, even though subways go under tunnels. So what happens the first time a suicide bomber hits the subway system? Do we hire another army of 45,000 and make Big Apple commuters go through another 20- or 30-minute security bottleneck? And if a bomber does strike before we do that, do we then blame Ridge or the New York police or the subway system? Or do we praise them because since September 11, the police department has put cops on patrol in the subways and in the tunnels looking for bombs and bombers, and Ridge’s efforts have resulted in more cities, including New York, getting more funds for emergency first-responders to buy equipment and conduct disaster drills?

Thus, any report card on how we’ve done securing the homeland since September 11 can’t ignore real-world constraints of resources and practicality. With that caveat, the report card so far:

Aviation: A

For months you’ve been reading that the new Transportation Security Agency is hopelessly bloated and incompetent, the classic do-nothing bureaucracy that has no chance of meeting its draconian, congressionally mandated deadlines–Nov. 19 to replace the low-wage private security guards who screen passengers with well-trained federal workers, and Dec. 31 to have equipment and still more Feds in place screening all checked luggage for explosives. But despite funding holdups from Congress and the problems associated with launching from scratch the biggest new federal agency since the New Deal, the TSA, I predict, will end up meeting the deadlines at most airports and, in fact, will ultimately be praised as a rare model of a government agency that truly works. Stories abound about security screw-ups at airports where TSA has not yet taken over. But powered by a cadre of executives borrowed from such private-sector companies as Federal Express, Intel, Disney and Marriott, and by career government managers who really care, TSA is gradually winning over passengers and even local airport managers as it begins fanning out across the country.

TSA’s work on screening–plus new safeguards aimed at securing airport perimeters and cockpits, and thousands of new air marshals–make it exponentially more difficult than it was a year ago for terrorists to hit airplanes, let alone use them as guided missiles.

But the metal detectors and X-ray machines TSA screeners use at gate checkpoints won’t detect plastic knives and other, increasingly clever homemade weapons, nor can they detect many explosives (such as the shoe bomb allegedly carried onboard an airliner last December by Richard Reid). That’s why TSA needs to keep hand-searching a selected sample of all passengers. But by the beginning of next year a new profiling system will replace the current primitive one that now forces you and me and often even our kids to be wanded and have our carry-ons picked through simply because we are buying one-way tickets and aren’t using a frequent-flier number. The new system, with its scary use of all kinds of data about what we buy and where we go, will be highly controversial. But it will solve the political dilemma of ethnic or racial profiling by doing it without really doing it: it will single out people, in part, based on what countries they have traveled to. In other words, an American of Saudi ancestry might not be selected for a special screening, but someone (including that same person) who has traveled there might, especially if he meets other criteria such as having had multiple bank accounts or addresses in the last few years.

Other Transportation: C

We’ve done little to protect trains or buses, or even bridges and tunnels that are easy targets for truck bombs. The reason the grade here isn’t an F is that, as with the New York City subway scenario, there is a limit to what we can realistically do. But we can do more, such as installing chemical and radiation detectors in more mass-transit systems (some, including Washington, D.C.’s, have started) and doing far better background checking of drivers allowed to operate large trucks.

Ports: B

America’s ports–where 20,000 tractor-trailer-size cargo containers arrive from around the world every day–are the most dangerous pressure point in our economy. Not only might the destruction from a nuclear or biological device hidden in one of those containers be catastrophic, but suspension of shipping after a bomb in a cargo container would dwarf the economic consequences of September 11.

The fact that only 2 percent of those containers get inspected by Customs Service officials has been cited repeatedly as evidence of the government’s haplessness here. But there’s more to the story. Customs, which was actually a pretty good agency before September 11, has revamped itself quickly and established risk criteria (country of origin, identity of shipper, etc.) that makes the percentage of containers inspected (which is now closer to 4 or 5 percent) less important than the fact that the containers most at risk are being checked. Also, Customs chief William Bonner has begun a program to let “trusted” shippers truck their goods across from Canada faster, allowing Customs to worry about those who have not been pre-screened. And he is busy negotiating agreements with other countries so that our inspectors can be deployed at their ports checking cargo before it leaves; he’s already succeeded at six of the world’s 20 largest ports (and is close to getting deals with many of the rest). And with Ridge’s support, Bonner has gotten the money to give every Customs inspector his or her own radiation detector, to develop tamperproof seals and sensors to tell Bonner’s people when a container had been opened without authorization, and to deploy more of the giant X-ray machines used to check containers before deciding which ones need full inspections. The Coast Guard has also been allocated lots of new resources to help. That partnership will be strengthened by the joining of the two in the proposed new Department of Homeland Security–a massive reorganization for which the Bush administration deserves a separate “A” for defying the Beltway’s bureaucratic fiefdoms.

Borders: D-

There’s a huge difference between our relatively well-fortified seaports and the rest of our borders. A terrorist could still move weapons of mass destruction through Canada’s relatively porous borders and then blend in with one of the millions of pleasure boats on the Great Lakes, where the Coast Guard and Border Patrol are still almost hopelessly understaffed. Or he could take a boat across the barely patrolled river in Detroit.

At official land-border crossings such as Pembina, N.D., cars and trucks stopped for inspection are now met by Customs agents with radiation detectors and the same giant X-ray machines used at the seaports. But the cameras and other detection devices needed along the thousands of miles of border where there are no official ports of entry still aren’t there. This is the responsibility of the still lame Immigration and Naturalization Service and its Border Patrol unit. The INS is still so hopeless that to explain the delay in deploying cameras on poles along the northern border, the Justice Department (which houses INS until the Homeland Security Department is created and begins to give INS the leadership and mission it has lacked) cited a sensitivity not usually associated with the Bush administration. The “sites are undergoing five to seven month environmental assessments prior to disturbing any land where a pole may be placed,” the department recently noted in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, explaining what in the Sept. 12 era should be unexplainable–why completion of 55 simple pole installations will take 18 to 24 months.

As for INS’s progress in keeping track of the millions of immigrants who overstay their visas, the agency hasn’t even decided yet what kind of entry-exit tracking system to build, let alone begun building it.

Major Public Events: A

As anyone who’s been to the super Bowl or the Olympics can attest, we’ve done well protecting the country’s highest-profile public gatherings, using a protocol started in the Clinton administration under which these are designated as National Special Security Events, with supervision for protecting them given to the Secret Service.

But with more than 100 stadiums holding 50,000 people or more, not to mention thousands of theaters and other venues, there are lots of vulnerabilities at not-so-major public events. And we’re likely to want to do more after some nut or terrorist tries something somewhere.

Chemical Plants and Other Hazardous Materials: F

This is a thousand-points-of-vulnerability risk that has remained largely below the radar. As a result, industry lobbyists and infighting among a multitude of government agencies trying to defend their turf have combined to hold Ridge’s office and the Environmental Protection Agency at bay–meaning no new regulations to enhance chemical-plant safety and the security of the thousands of daily shipments of hazardous materials. One blown-up plant, truck or train, and the press will be calling for the scalps of those who let it happen.

Dirty Nukes: C

We are deploying lots more radiation detectors, and federal, state and local agencies are stepping up their monitoring of the materials that terrorists could use to make dirty bombs. All over the country, first-responders have been conducting drills and what are called “tabletop” exercises to practice dealing with the consequences of mixing radioactive material with a conventional bomb so as to scare people with the increased but not fatal radiation levels that would result. That’s the good news. The bad news is that because these kinds of attacks are meant more to cause panic than actual destruction, advance public education and dialogue about them are crucial. And, except for hearings held last winter by Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Joseph Biden, that hasn’t happened.

Water, Food and Bioterrorism: B-

We’ve stockpiled more than a billion doses of antibiotics and 85 million doses of smallpox vaccine. The states have been given grants to develop bioterrorism preparedness plans, and many have done so. But others have balked at legislating the kind of authority for quarantines that they’ll wish they had if there is an attack. Stockpiles of “push packs” of medical supplies have been deployed across the country; databases to keep track of food and fertilizer have been upgraded; and the nation’s 379 water systems are getting grants to do protection plans. But it will take years of federal coordination and state and local activism.

Public Buildings: C+

True, visitors to most office buildings now get asked to show identification. But without a guard checking upstairs to make sure they are expected, that hardly makes a difference. Many buildings still don’t do that. Even more haven’t secured access to ventilation systems, which means that biological weapons could easily be directed at thousands of people at once. The SEC has had plenty of other things to do this year, but it still could have helped the private sector to focus more on security by pushing public companies to spell out their security measures and risks, much the way they had to disclose to shareholders what kind of Y2k challenges they faced. (An SEC spokeswoman says it has never heard of the idea, but Ridge started talking about it in January.)

As for other public buildings, shopping malls continue to be easy targets. The day after September 11, the government began prohibiting airports from allowing anyone to park in a parking space within 300 feet of a terminal. The idea was to prevent someone from leaving a car bomb there. But what’s so special about airport terminals? We can still park not just within 300 feet of a shopping mall but actually in one; and no one checked my car the last time I did that at huge mall in White Plains, N.Y. Likewise, when, as an experiment, I left a large shopping bag unattended for 15 minutes in the mall’s crowded eating area, no guard came to check it.

The point isn’t that we need to ban parking at malls (talk about strangling the homeland in order to save it), but that we need to be thinking about risks in a more mature, balanced way.

I made this category the last one because it takes us back to where we started–figuring out how to assess what’s been done and what we should do against real-world constraints, and in the context of what kind of society we want to live in. The sad truth is that public spaces are likely to undergo the worst real-world changes in the months ahead. For it seems impossible that some terrorist of some kind won’t follow the lead of Palestinian suicide bombers and attack us with a bomb where we work, eat, shop or wait for a train. How will we deal with that?

The first answer is that our leaders should start the discussion now. To take one aspect of the issue, the Bush administration has run from even talking about the idea of a national identification card, but it’s clear that we’d all be talking about that after the first suicide bombing. That instant, we’d start wanting to know who’s entering our public spaces and what they might be bringing with them. Some kind of card–maybe one sold by private companies under government guidelines–that lets us know that some people need less inspection than others would be the only way not to paralyze everything we do, from getting on a train to the simple act of entering an office or a restaurant.

Those who choose to buy and be screened for such a card would get on a faster-moving line to get into a building, a shopping mall or a stadium than others would. But those without a card would still get in, after passing more careful scrutiny.

September 11 was only a year ago, and it takes time to confront how we have to change our way of life and our way of looking at the people and dynamics that threaten it. But when it comes to a public dialogue about these difficult issues, we need to earn ourselves an “A” by next year. It’s an effort that only a president can lead, and it shouldn’t wait until he has to prepare an Oval Office talk the night of the first suicide bombing.