Right, left & none of the above: three voters make up their minds.

At the dual risk of being a prig and a bore, let me begin with what the scholastics called the via remotionis (crudely: what something is not). I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Republican Party. In the Catholic ghetto where I grew up, I never laid eyes on a known Republican until I was in high school. And while I accept that, alas, man is by nature a political animal, I have always thought that you really have to be some kind of dumb to expect much of, identify with, or invest yourself wholly in any political party, including the Republicans.

Yet barring any political earthquakes between now and November, I will vote with no little enthusiasm for George W. Bush and a whole raft of other Republican candidates.

My enthusiasm, to continue just a little more in the same philosophical direction, is not primarily about Bush. His down-home Texas routine is more foreign to me than Kerry's tony Swiss schooling (though I've grown to appreciate its prickly charm, especially given Kerry's lumbering blandness). Like his father, Bush is a thoroughly decent person. But despite all efforts, he somehow seems unable to communicate deep moral passion, which I have no doubt he feels. Bush knows the words, but can't carry the tune. By contrast, Tony Blair was eloquent, just short of Churchillian, in the run-up to the Iraq war. So, while I support and largely agree with Bush, I admit his manner can come across as brittle.

More seriously, the Bush administration seems to have faltered at what I expected would be its strong suit: steadiness and competence. Dick Cheney, media portraits aside, is one of the few real adults I have met in Washington, and a truly likable man. And there are other Bush advisers who have plenty of experience and know-how about Washington politics. Yet they--Karl Rove prominently among them, I believe--have sold off various parts of the conservative patrimony not for a mess of pottage, but for an empty pot. I do not know any other way to characterize their clumsy efforts to buy senior votes with drug benefits and Hispanic votes with virtual amnesty for illegals. This failed at both ends: they abandoned their own principles and got nothing in return. They did a bit better in finally getting rid of tariffs on foreign steel, but only after dithering back and forth in the hope of placating steel workers in Pennsylvania and other swing states.

And then there's the war. My son-in-law is a Marine lieutenant in Fallujah and his e-mails to me (yes, this is our first instant e-mail war) express disgust with domestic media coverage of the Iraq conflict, which he thinks is going far better than most Americans realize. I hope this is right. But I cannot say that I think the administration has done a first-rate job in managing the postwar situation. I supported and still support the decision to go into Iraq. (A quick digression: if Bush "lied" about WMDs in Iraq, then Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Jacques Chirac, Gerhart Schroeder, Vladimir Putin, Hosni Mubarak, the King of Jordan, and various lesser lights did the same--you can look it up.) But it does not take much insight to see that the administration has occasionally let the tiller slip and has had to fumble to get a grip again. A Kerry administration would be far worse, disastrous in fact, but I expected more steadiness from this White House.

My own real enthusiasm in this election, I will confess, is that the Republicans are not Democrats, but not entirely. On the whole, I prefer the Republican approach to many problems. I don't understand much about economics, for example, but so far as I can make out from the charts, the recent recession began toward the end of the Clinton administration, continued into the first year of Bush's presidency, then took a deep dive with the stock market after 9/11. Since then, the White House has done a remarkable job in getting the economy back on track. The president will probably earn little credit for taking the bad hand he was dealt and playing the cards rather well, but his basic policies, such as tax cuts, are the right ones, I believe. Still, I would not make up my mind in this election on most economic questions. To judge by their recent presidential questionnaire, our bishops imply that the minimum wage, farm policy, low-cost housing, and other such issues are crucial. They are important, and other things being equal, might even be decisive in certain times and circumstances. But other things are not equal.

The major media outlets often say that the Republicans are hostage to a narrow "theological" minority on abortion, embryonic stem cells, gay marriage, and various other issues. But there are actually some diversity of opinion among Republicans and real debate at the level of national politics. My friend Leon Kass, who heads the president's bioethics commission, for instance, has been wrongly characterized as a tool of Republican sectarians. Anyone who knows him and the commission's work also knows that he thinks deeply and is far from dogmatic--too far for me, in some cases. If you want narrow dogma, how about the plight of a major political party in which being prolife disqualifies you from seeking national office because special interests forbid it? The shameful treatment of the late Bob Casey at the 1992 Democratic convention inaugurated an ideological chokehold on the party that keeps many of us, who might otherwise look at a Democratic candidate--occasionally, in theory, in fear and trembling--from ever doing so.

It has often been said that Catholics have no political home in America: the Republicans are hard-hearted toward the poor and the Democrats callous about innocent life. This is something of a political cartoon, but it expresses enough truth to make us reflect. I myself will not go to the mat for a stronger immigration policy or faith-based initiatives or No Child Left Behind. Mostly, I vote against abortion these days because I think that this one practice has coarsened our national life and deadened our finer human sentiments as nothing else in my lifetime. For me, an abortion society is the moral equivalent of a slave-holding society and maybe worse: at least slave masters did not kill over a million slaves every year.

So when all is said and done, I'll vote Republican because President Bush, I believe, won't appoint Supreme Court justices who will further entrench Roe v. Wade in our dear land. John Kerry could potentially nominate four proabortion justices, which would establish abortion through the lifetimes of my children and future grandchildren, and probably forever. The Democrats' enslavement to special interests and consequent inability to run prolife candidates for high office is doing deep harm both to their own party and to the nation. And I cannot, in conscience, cooperate in the permanent corruption of our moral life--particularly at the hands of a professed Catholic.

Robert Royal is president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His book The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century: A Comprehensive World History (Crossroad) is soon to be reissued in paperback.

Why am I supporting John Kerry? Because despite the decency, fairness, and generosity of our people, America has never been more feared and despised in the world than it is today.

Because future generations of Americans are now saddled with budget deficits so crippling, their opportunities for financial security are gravely imperiled.

Because the United States has now proclaimed a new foreign policy, the Bush Doctrine, which embraces a theory of "preemptive war," even when the United States has not been threatened with attack, as in the case of Iraq.

Because as a nation we are less equal, less prosperous, and less secure than we were just four years ago. Indeed, we are more divided, more vulnerable, and more impoverished. While this is not altogether the fault of George W. Bush, no other individual bears greater responsibility.

John Kerry was not my first choice to be the nominee of the Democratic Party. He wasn't even my second choice, primarily because of his confusing stance on the war. Enough was known at the time about the intentions of the Bush administration to warrant a refusal to grant them the authority to invade Iraq. It was already evident that an invasion would squander the support of most of our allies and risk the precarious gains we had made in the war on terror. Yet Kerry made his choice, and his subsequent explanations for that vote have been wanting both in clarity and consistency. It is especially difficult to square his support for the Iraq resolution with his vote against a similar grant of authority in the Kuwait war, which involved a legitimate exercise of power to uphold international law and which, accordingly, had the support of most of the world.

His record on abortion is also troubling, not so much on account of his endorsement of Roe v. Wade, as for his lack of initiative to reduce the number of abortions. We could do so much more to reduce this tragedy by providing greater assistance to mothers in need of assistance for their children. No other developed nation does so little for such a vulnerable population. Even if you grant that abortion should be legal in order to be safe, it is nevertheless incumbent on a moral society to make abortions rare by offering women means of support to care sufficiently for their children.

But on a range of other issues both broad and deep, Senator Kerry's public record is vastly superior to that of President Bush. And on matters of character and judgment, which are harder to quantify, but more important than any Senate vote, I believe that Kerry is far more likely to lead America wisely, to protect our liberty, and to restore our honor.

Presidential elections involving an incumbent are invariably a referendum of sorts. Ronald Reagan's famous debate question, "Ask yourself if you are better off now than you were four years ago," is a fair one. Only the wealthiest segment of the country could reasonably answer yes today. For the poor, the working and middle classes, life is notably more difficult and the future is strikingly more uncertain.

The president who campaigned as a "compassionate conservative," as "a uniter, not a divider," turned immediately after his election to a governing strategy designed to appease the most conservative elements of his political base. It is as though he needed somehow to repudiate the record of his father, who respected alliances and was fiscally responsible. Karl Rove, the White House political director, has made no secret of his view that the president's father erred in governing as a moderate.

The greater shock, however, has been the degree to which a hard core of extremists, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, gained control of U.S. foreign policy and upended some of our most basic values. It is hard to imagine that Colin Powell had any idea what he was signing on for as secretary of state, given the very different record of the previous Bush administration. The majority of military and diplomatic professionals in government had grave concerns about the wisdom of going into Iraq with such flawed assumptions and poor planning. Now we are left to cope with the bitter fruit of the ideologues' arrogance: the worst foreign-policy disaster for the United States in thirty years. It seems wholly irrational to return to office an administration that has failed so thoroughly the test of national security.

Kerry has an even stronger case to make in domestic policy. On the budget, tax cuts, trade policy, and more, this has been the most radical administration of my lifetime. Kerry deserves particular credit for his proposal to address a crisis in health care that has left 45 million Americans without insurance protection. His health plan would extend coverage to 95 percent of the population, including every child. It is affordable; it would be paid in part by repealing tax cuts showered on the wealthiest Americans by President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress. By covering the uninsured, we have the prospect of improving quality and controlling health costs, which now threaten our economic recovery.

Under the Clinton administration, the number of Americans living in poverty declined an average of 800,000 per year. Under President Bush, the number has increased an average of 1.5 million per year. The average annual job growth under Clinton was 2.83 million; under Bush, the average annual decline has been 450,000. The annual average surplus in the Clinton years was $5 billion, and the annual average deficit under Bush is now a staggering $350 billion. When the Baby Boomers begin to retire, it will get much, much worse.

The environmental record of the Bush administration is a special cause for alarm, especially for future generations who will have to live with the consequences. A cavalier disregard for the effects of global climate change, symbolized by rejection of the Kyoto treaty; repeated efforts to drill for oil and gas in sensitive ecosystems; and opening the national forests for massive new logging operations are all fraught with peril. For communities of faith, this degradation challenges the biblical injunction for us to be stewards of the Earth and all that lives on it.

At this writing, the polls show President Bush with a lead. But I think Kerry will win, and win decisively. I am reminded of the late 1970s, when the Democratic Party began to lose a significant part of the Catholic vote because of abortion. Most public opinion polls failed to pick up the shift immediately because of limitations in polling methodology with small samples--they underestimate the defection of vertical slices of the electorate. This time it is a part of the Republican base that is quietly defecting--moderate conservatives who are dismayed by events in Iraq and the size of the budget deficits. I have yet to hear someone who voted for Gore the last time say he or she is supporting Bush this time. But I frequently hear the opposite, and Gore won the popular vote the last time.

John Kerry isn't ideal. What politician is? But he has served our country with distinction throughout his career. George Bush is neither stupid nor evil, as some would have it. But his conduct of the war and the direction of the economy are a reflection of underlying incompetence. I am not aware of any president whose second term was much of an improvement, especially when the first term was seriously compromised. Changing leaders now is less risky than sticking with folly for four more years.

In this time of danger, I will vote my hopes, not my fears. As the Bard of New Jersey, AKA Bruce Springsteen, wrote in his endorsement of Kerry-Edwards, "Our American government has strayed too far from American values. It is time to move forward. The country we carry in our hearts is waiting."

Thomas Higgins is the CEO of a biotechnology company in San Francisco.

With less than a month to go, I'm planning not to vote in this November's presidential election. I'm not happy about this situation: it's rare that a day goes by without the difficulty of my decision pressing itself upon me in one way or another. My children, for both of whom this election is the first they're old enough to vote, find it puzzling, since I constantly encourage them to take their new civic status with all the seriousness they can muster. My wife, who belongs to the anything-but-Bush school (as do most of my colleagues), finds it reprehensible because she thinks that not voting only makes it more likely that our president will be reelected. And the U.S. Catholic bishops and the pope have clearly and repeatedly pressed upon me, as a Catholic, the importance of my civic duty to participate fully in the political life of my country--which certainly means voting. All this I take very seriously: it is my duty to vote, and yet I'm planning not to.

And it's worse yet. I'm a naturalized American who was sworn in with all the usual pomp and circumstance in a ceremony ten years ago in South Bend, Indiana. I chose to pursue citizenship after some years of living in this country without it (I was born and raised in England) exactly because I wanted to participate fully in the civic and political life of the country in which I'd chosen to live, and couldn't do so without a vote. I have voted in every election, local and national, for which I was eligible since I was naturalized (for Clinton in 1996 and for Bush in 2000), though with an increasingly bad conscience in presidential elections. But now, in 2004, I can no longer see my way to voting, because each of the two major candidates has committed deal-breaking offenses, which means that they've either done or advocated things which make it impossible to vote for them.

A deal is broken if one of the parties to it does something that makes it improper for the other party to continue in it no matter what the ancillary circumstances. If one spouse uses physical violence against another, this breaks the deal of living together: you don't go on living with someone who hits you on a regular basis, no matter what other virtues they might have. If someone starts screaming insults at you during a conversation, that deal is broken: the conversation is at an end until they've calmed down. And in the case of voting (which is also a deal: I vote, as I hope you do, in response to what a candidate advocates and has done), there are also deal breakers, which is to say actions done or positions advocated sufficient to make voting for someone improper, no matter what other good policies that person may advocate and no matter what other good things he or she may have done.

So far as I can see, both John Kerry and George W. Bush have committed deal breakers. I think other Catholics ought to think so too. And if I'm right about this, the duty to vote is trumped by the duty not to continue with a deal that has been preemptively broken. But this requires an argument.

John Kerry represents his party with full vigor on the question of abortion. The Democrats' position has hardened into dogma during the past two decades, and Kerry represents the dogma well: he voted against the law banning partial-birth abortion, for example, and he has consistently said that a woman's right to choose is guaranteed by the Constitution and that he will oppose all efforts, judicial or legislative, to modify the position taken by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. He thus advocates as nonnegotiable policy the unrestricted legality of the killing of our children, and he promises to act on that conviction in his federal judicial appointments among other things. This, in my judgment, is a deal breaker: I cannot vote for a man who advocates this, and I think no Catholic should. The church's teaching on this question is clear, unequivocal, and exact. I hope that other Americans might also recognize the heinousness of Kerry's advocacy on this matter, and certainly some do; but I know, too, that the consciences of many Americans, Catholic and otherwise, have been formed in ways that make it difficult for them to acknowledge the truth about this question, and so my hope is tempered with realism.

George W. Bush advocates a foreign policy that includes the doctrine of preemptive war. This is clear, for instance, in the introduction he signed to the 2002 document, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, and in many of his public statements in the last two years. This is not yet a deal breaker, in my judgment, though I think it ill-advised and almost certainly incompatible with Catholic just-war doctrine. What is a deal breaker, however, is the fact that President Bush has acted upon the doctrine in such a way as to lead this country into war in Iraq on publicly stated grounds, all of which have turned out to be false. I don't say that he lied: I haven't the information to know. But I do know that the grounds I, as an American citizen, was given by my president for the invasion of Iraq in late 2002 and early 2003 (weapons of mass destruction, imminent threat to U.S. security, Iraqi cooperation with Al Qaeda) have all turned out to be false. Any president who has done such a thing has committed a deal breaker: you just don't vote for someone who has authorized the killing of thousands of Iraqis and over a thousand U.S. soldiers on false grounds. Catholics have special reasons here, among the more important of which is the consistent opposition to U.S. policy by the pope. But all Americans should recognize that this president is not worthy of reelection, though here too I have to recognize with regret that many will not; our political culture is not as conducive to clarity of thought, as I'd wish.

You might object to this line of argument by saying that there are no deal breakers in politics, that we have to look at the whole picture and make prudential, calculative judgments about what will, on the whole, be best for the country. On good days, I find this line half persuasive. But it really won't do: if the two candidates were Hitler and Stalin, would you feel that you had to vote for one of them?

You might also, I suppose, object to the idea that either of the things I've pointed to really is a deal breaker. Perhaps advocating the legality of killing children and authorizing preemptive wars on false grounds really aren't so bad, you might say. But this also begins to sound implausible when put so bluntly. Indeed, it begins to sound disgusting.

And so my sad position is that, in this election at least, the United States is a country in which voting is not proper. I hope to be argued out of it. But I suspect that increasing numbers of Catholics are feeling an uneasiness of this kind, and if I'm right about this, it means that there is also increasing awareness that we Catholics aren't as comfortable or as welcome in America as we have thought.

Paul J. Griffiths is the Schmitt Professor of Catholic Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His Lying: An Augustinian Theology of Duplicity (Brazos) has just been published.