Here is my summary of why I’m voting the way I am, as if there could be any surprises at this point.

Why I am voting for John Kerry

He seems like a smart, reasonable human being who comprehends government, understands war and addresses the world the way it is rather than according to a theory about the way it is. Every word that comes out of Kerry’s mouth makes crystal, common sense. And while I’ve heard him called a flip-flopper, I’ve never seen any examples of it hold up under scrutiny.

Sure, like the rest of the country, I’ve had trouble getting a fix on his personality. What his campaign tries to sell us is film of him jumping fences, balancing on rails and riding his motorcycle onto the Tonight Show – images of a competitive little boy. He seems to address everything as a challenge. That’s what I saw in the debates, too: a guy who doesn’t take any garbage from anybody – his political opponents or America’s enemies.

If you still think he lacks personality, well, his wife has enough to cover both of them.

Why I’m not voting for George W. Bush

I flat-out don’t trust his judgment.

We now know he went into Iraq with literally no post-war plan. He didn’t prepare for the post-battle looting. He didn’t anticipate the extent of the insurgency. His reasons for invading kept changing, and never panned out. Now, we don’t have the troop strength to pose a plausible threat to Iran or North Korea. And after landing us here, Bush’s bad judgment can probably land us somewhere else just as bad.

As for terrorism, you know who fought it more effectively? Bill Clinton. Look at what did not happen on Dec. 31, 1999. We were due for attacks that night, so Clinton stayed on top of it. While Bush did not ignore terrorism, he didn’t treat it with Clinton’s urgency, even as terrorist chatter increased to alarming levels in August 2001. Bush literally had to have a building fall on him before he really focused on the problem. Actually, two buildings. And part of another one. Even in Afghanistan afterwards, he didn’t catch Osama bin Laden, an omission for which Clinton was more routinely slammed.

In the meantime, he sank the government into record debt in record time. He passed tax cuts that disproportionately favored the rich even though the rich had enjoyed a steady drop in taxes already for the last 20 years or so. Then he pumped up government spending.

I also doubt his ethics. He said something unsupportable in a State of the Union Address – that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger. When former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV publicly accused him of lying about this kind of thing – voila! – Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame was exposed as a covert CIA operative. That’s treason, and Bush never seemed especially bothered by it. The country is also deeply divided, to an alarming degree, and I hold Bush partly responsible. A small example: saying “What else can you expect from a senator from Massachusetts?” I’ve never heard that kind of regional bigotry from Kerry.

And the environment. Bush began his presidency by flip-flopping on his promise to control carbon emissions. He erased references to global warming in his own government reports. He’s made it easier for old coal-burning power plants to dodge standards in the Clean Air Act. He’s rolled back safeguards on your air and water in hundreds of ways that you never hear about.

These are consistently bad results. And while al Qaeda learns from its mistakes, George Bush does not.

Why I’m not voting for Ralph Nader

First of all, Ralph Nader will never win. You don’t magically go from 1 percent to 51 percent in a week.

Second of all, if he’s trying to pry corporate interests loose from government, it’ll only work if he draws an equal number of voters from both parties. But he mostly attracts (and hurts) Democrats. If the Democrats thus unilaterally buckle to anti-corporate pressure, that’ll give the GOP even more of a fundraising advantage, further consolidating its power.

Third of all, there really are clear differences between the two major candidates. There were last time, too. And those differences will be made particularly manifest – and permanent – when the time comes to appoint new Supreme Court justices.

Under Bush, it wouldn’t surprise me if the court de-clawed the EPA and every other sort of oversight for which Nader ever fought.

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That’s it. I’ll be glad when this election is over in November. Well, realistically, December.