WASHINGTON, 27 August 2004 — I don’t know how I got into this fix. There I was, with only six months to go before the November election. But then things happened, unexpected things, and each one seemed to upset me more than the previous event. A year ago I had decided that President George W. Bush had betrayed me, in particular, and therefore probably a very large bloc of similar-thinking voters.

After the eternal procrastinating of President Bill Clinton, at almost the last moment of his term, in the fall of 1998, he really tried to end the Israeli-Palestinian problem. But it was too late and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made mincemeat of him. All he had to do was make up a story that the United States had almost reached a deal and then that Yasser Arafat had welshed on it. All lies of course since if Netanyahu had agreed, the problem would have been solved.

Thus it was easy for me and thousands of other American voters to decide to give Bush a chance to solve the Israeli-Palestine dilemma. Our votes made the difference and it was right down to the wire in Florida that Bush won and candidate Al Gore lost. Then, less than a year later Sept.11 came along and everything seemed to change, particularly when it came time to do something about the Israeli-Palestine problem.

Let me be fair to Bush because he did make some key remarks that helped Americans realize that the vast majority of Muslims are well-meaning people who are just trying to make a living, stay off welfare and help their fellow human beings like everyone else. Most Americans accepted that and realized that Muslim-Americans are, in all aspects, good citizens and should not be intimidated in matters of conscience.

But that’s about all that President Bush did after that. Instead he signed the Patriot Act that is just as un-American as anything else that has ever been enacted under pressure and haste without thinking through the consequences. We have only to recall what happened to Japanese-Americans in World War II, and earlier un-American activities in prior generations such as discouraging the teaching of German in the public schools. That was foolish then and remains a highpoint of stupidity. The American Constitution should be our guiding force and should not be breached without very good reasons. And I’m not talking about whether it is or is not important to mention the word “under God,” which makes no difference to most of the American people.

So I felt quite sure that Bush had failed my tests and I almost certainly would vote for a Democratic candidate, whoever he might be. I hoped it would be Howard Dean, and in fact I had rationalized myself into thinking that one of the first things Dean would do would be to try to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem once and for all. But that didn’t happen and, in fact, Dean did not carry a single state in any of the early primaries.

So then American voters began to look ever so carefully at what the winner of the primaries, Sen. John Kerry, stands for. It appears that Kerry stands on both sides of every given question. And he can give sound bites, long dissertations and even whole election speeches on any given subject.

The more I looked into the matter, the more I realize that there is only one constant around which everything else was flexible. That is the subject of Israel. He was for Israel from the time he was first elected by Massachusetts’s voters. As the years progressed, Kerry was always for Israel. There were no exceptions. He never lost an opportunity to vote for money for Israel regardless of the consequences to America. There are plenty of similar pro-Israel voters. For example, in my state of Maryland, Sen. Barbara Mikulski and Sen. Paul Sarbanes always vote for Israel regardless of the consequences to the American public. Anyone knows that Israel’s Ariel Sharon, the “butcher of Beirut,” hates the United States and makes statements like “Don’t worry about the United States, we’ll take care of that.” And Sharon means it because Kerry, Sarbanes, Mikulski and dozens of other incumbent senators (and representatives) will vote the way the Israelis tell them to because they fear to do otherwise. This is a fact and it is disgusting, totally un-American and every one of them ought to be impeached.

And while I’m venting there’s one more thing that I will get off my chest. It’s interesting that in America’s blue-blooded families there has been a fair amount of intermarriage between Republicans and Democrats, as it should be. For example the Rockefeller family has both parties represented in its flanks.

It turned out that Kerry’s blue-blooded ancestors and the Bush family tree were pretty much alike. But there was one difference, probably a minor one, but still it stuck out like a sore thumb, at least to me. On his father’s side a Kerry had converted from Judaism to Catholicism when the family came to the United States.

No one had paid much attention to this until recently when Kerry himself began to bring up the subject. It seems that there have been many rabbis in the family tree and Kerry was exploiting this on the campaign trail, at least when it served his purposes. I suppose most Americans paid little attention to this but it certainly did not escape Kerry’s handlers who wanted to make sure that Kerry was going to be suitably pro-Israel.

Perhaps Kerry was trying to make the point that if you wanted a pro-Israel candidate you’d do much better with Kerry than with Bush, who didn’t have any such lineage at all. Kerry’s brother Cameron converted to Judaism when he married a Jewish woman. It’s also a fact that Cameron has been an adviser and political strategist for Kerry’s campaign.

Apropos of nothing, Howard Dean’s wife, Judith, is Jewish and no one used that fact either for or against her husband. The truth of the matter is that in the American melting pot you can find a Jewish ancestor and probably just about any other kind of ancestor one wants. So what?

And back to real life. Here we all sit, along with thousands of other undecided voters. Bush, for whatever reason, does not have a single adviser who is Jewish in his Cabinet, unlike Clinton who had an extraordinary number of advisers and appointees who were Jewish. Which candidate’s group is the best bet for solving the Palestine problem, which in my case, is the key to peace in the Middle East?

Former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, who was a major confidante of Clinton’s, is still tangled up with his advisers four years later. Now Berger seems to have “lost” some keynotes that he should have disposed of at the time he left office. The notes have disappeared and they are highly classified. Do Americans want another Sandy Berger who may well have been handing over classified materials to Israelis for years? I don’t think so.

But then look at George W. Bush who apparently can’t go anywhere unless big brother, Vice President Richard Cheney, is within hailing distance to tell him what to do next. To be blunt, it’s pathetic that Bush has no mind of his own. Bush is caught between Secretary of State Colin Powell, who tries to tidy up messes left behind by Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who has been told to put the brakes on his shenanigans and disappear until after the election.

Ralph Nader only further complicates the 2004 election. He is, to my mind, a better candidate than either Kerry or Bush. But the US system makes a third candidate like a third wheel, with nothing to do with anything. So if you vote for Nader, Bush wins. Is that what most voters want? I don’t think so.

I found myself in the same impasse over 30 years ago when I still hadn’t made up my mind until the day I had to vote. Then I hadn’t liked Richard Nixon, the former vice president. I also didn’t like John F. Kennedy. One commentator at the time, Eric Severide, compared Nixon and Kennedy to two fraternity boys, one from Southern California and Duke University and the other from Massachusetts, neither of whom seemed fully matured.

In desperation I chose Kennedy and the final decision was made primarily in Chicago when big city machine votes turned the tide against the Illinois down-state rural vote. It is interesting that Nixon chose not to contest the vote for the sake of the country. (Strangely, Al Gore made the same decision 40 years later when he stopped contesting the 2000 election.)

Meanwhile, I’m stuck trying to decide whom to vote for. And, of course, I still hope one or the other will say something about the Palestine problem and make my decision less difficult.

— Richard Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs magazine.