June 14 - Whether you're a liberal Democrat like me or a conservative Republican (you know, one of those people who annoy me), it's safe to say that you think this coming election presents the nation with a very clear choice: To dump Bush or not to dump Bush.

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That's not the case, though, for the Undecideds, a group of 2-million to 20-million Americans who, despite a two-year-long campaign, millions of dollars in campaign ads, tens of thousands of news stories and dozens of Top 10 Lists on Letterman, still haven't quite figured outwhat they think of the president or his challenger.

Now, if you don't yet have an opinion, I'm not here to persuade you to take one side or another. I merely want to argue that there is simply something wrong with you.

I'm not saying that one must have an opinion on every topic under the sun. But while it's okay to be undecided about some things (Should I have the chicken or the salmon? Should I see the summer blockbuster about the guy stuck in the airline terminal or the kids who fight villainous monsters? Should I wear these pants or do they make me look hippy?), this presidential election is not one of those things.

The worst thing about this undecided voter is how much money and time both campaigns will spend over the next four months to court this tiny portion of the electorate. They'll do anything to convert even one soul, pouring millions upon millions into TV ads and campaign appearances in such states as Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Missouri and Minnesota (we never get campaign commercials here in New York--most of our minds were made up long before President Bush ignored the "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." memo the month before 9/11).

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As Republican strategist Frank Luntz recently described the phenomenon: "If you're an undecided in Ohio,they'll come cut your grass and wash your dishes."

But who is this undecided voter? If you ask me, he's a moron, but if you ask a senior Kerry advisor, you'll get a more diplomatic answer. The undecided voter, the unnamed source told The New York Times last week, is "a relatively low-information, relatively disengaged political person." I'll stick with my definition for the time being--but regardless of what you want to call them, this group of people, who can't choose a side in the clearest ideological choice since the Reagan-Mondale landslide in 1984, will decide who the next president is.

And no one really knows who they are. Depending on which pollster you listen to, the undecided voter is either a 28-year-old, hyper-informed, media-savvy, female academic who cares about the environment, isn't particularly religious and favors gun control or a 36-year-old, doltish, unemployed male gym teacher who drives a pickup truck, goes to church every day and has the Second Amendment tattooed on his chest. (Perhaps the Election of 2004 is just a reality TV show to bring these two star-crossed lovers together.)

The so-called experts don't even know how many undecideds there are. It's either a mere three percent of the electorate or as many as 20 million likely voters. Either way, we're talking about millions of voters, and they seem to be bunched in the most important swing states (like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan). How they got bunched there is anyone's guess (mine is that people who are undecided about this election--"Bush? Kerry? Aw, I don't know. They're both the same"--are probably just as undecided about relocating to a more exciting state).

So let's meet some of these undecided voters--and learn how depressing it is that these people are going to pick our next president. The New York Times interviewed one--a non-religious, anti-gun, pro-choice woman who "described herself as a Democrat who voted for Bush in 2000" (some Democrat). According to the Times, she was "put off" this year "by some of [Bush's] social policies and the war in Iraq". Yet she's still undecided! You don't have to be seeing two shrinks a week (I swear, it's working for me) to realize that this type of person will give someone--in this case, the president--the benefit of every doubt rather than admit an initial mistake in judgment.

The Los Angeles Times found us a rock-ribbed Republican who said she was initially convinced that invading Iraq was necessary because of the weapons of mass destruction. Now, according to the paper, "she feels betrayed--by the war, by the way the administration has handled its aftermath, by the Iraqi prisoner scandal." She called it "a huge, horrible mess." But will she vote for Kerry? No way. He's just a politician, she said, and "you can't trust any of them." Apparently, some people feel so betrayed by the president that all politicians are now suspect, even one whose campaign aims to oppose the man who betrayed them. Such attitudes remind me of battered wives who stand by their husbands.

The L.A. Times also gave us an unemployed airport worker, "a strong Gore backer in 2000" who "thinks Bush is doing a lousy job." Yet this man says he's undecided because he doesn't know enough about Kerry. Well, here's all anyone needs to know: KERRY'S NOT BUSH!

The Knight-Ridder syndicate uncovered a fundraiser for an AIDS group (she's undecided?! This is the president who promised millions for AIDS in Africa but never actually allocated the money). "There's information flying from both sides, and I don't know what to believe," she said. "I don't spend time doing a lot of research. It's all noise to me." Voters like this may just be ill-informed. But this woman lives in a swing state, so she probably has clean dishes. Meanwhile, the rest of us will be stuck with the man who washed them the best.

I'm not going to argue that every American should have his opinion of Democratic nominee John Kerry perfectly defined. Let's face it, Kerry's campaign has been so muddled that it's hard to know sometimes whether he is a war hero, an anti-war anti-hero, a war monger, a war widow or even a ward heeler. But if you don't have an opinion on President Bush, you don't have a pulse. This is the guy who said he opposed "nation-building," yet has plunged us into two such exercises--and has not finished either job. This is the guy who campaigned on fiscal prudence but has rung up huge deficits. This is the guy who said we'd be welcomed into Iraq as liberators--and then didn't have a backup plan when we weren't. This is the guy whose lawyers prepared legal briefs that implied that the Geneva Conventions need not always be followed in the war on terror. This is the guy whose White House's annual report on world terrorism this year said things were getting better when, in fact, they are not (Secretary of State Colin Powell says the inaccuracies were an error). This is the guy who hasn't been able to capture the man who perpetrated the largest mass murder in U.S. history--the 9/11 attacks--and actually diverted troops and resources away from the job so he could wage war against Iraq. For me, it's not the ideology; it's the incompetence.

But maybe those things don't bother you. Good, at least you're not an undecided voter!

Gersh Kuntzman is also a reporter for The New York Post. His website is at http://www.gersh.tv/

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