This year I’ve been watching the most frustrating presidential elections I can remember. This might be due to the fact I’ve only been alive for five presidential elections before this year, only four of which I can actually remember. It could also be due to the fact that this is the first presidential election I actually get to cast a ballot. But it is the campaigns of the two candidates that frustrate me the most.

In the four previous elections I knew whom I would have voted for, if I had the opportunity. I cannot say that about this election.

I can’t deny I’m leaning toward George W. Bush. If John Kerry wanted to, he could easily change that by talking about his views instead of attacking Bush’s.

Long before this election began, John Kerry had a good percentage of the votes. There are millions of Americans who can be classified as “anybody but Bush” voters. Their ballots were virtually cast long before Kerry won the Democratic nomination in the primaries this spring.

To the “anybody but Bush” voters, it didn’t matter if Wesley Clark, Howard Dean, Jonathan Edwards, Joe Lieberman, Dennis Kucinich or Al Sharpton had beaten Kerry for the nomination, their vote was going to the Democratic candidate. They would have punched their butterfly ballots for Big Bird as long as it said “D-Sesame Street” after his name.

A majority of Bush backers are just the same. Most of them would be classified in the “religious right” who see Bush as a president who brings morals and values to the White House, which to them is a refreshing change from the prior administration.

I, however, fall somewhere in the middle of these two groups. Bush has done plenty that I don’t approve of. I did not favor going to War in Iraq, I don’t believe in his faith-based initiatives and his educational policy has been largely ineffective.

From the beginning, this was Kerry’s election to take. He has a large base that doesn’t care what he stands for as long as his name isn’t Bush. All he has to do is win over the voters in the middle. How does he do this? He talks about his stances on issues rather than attacking Bush’s record.

Kerry had the perfect chance to do this during his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention. He passed on the opportunity to win over countless votes in favor of holding onto the votes he already had. He told America what they already knew. George Bush has made mistakes, but he failed to tell America what they wanted to know – what he would do to be better than Bush.

Neither candidate’s campaigns will say anything provocative because they might lose some members of their base. If either says anything new they run the risk of being called a “flip-flopper” or a “doodie head” or some other childish insult, which is beneath two men that have been slinging mud at each other for the past several months.

Voters like me will have to wait for the presidential debates to actually find out what Kerry will do if he is elected. Or Kerry might keep attacking Bush on his record, say nothing about himself and lose the election because undecided voters like me will vote for the candidate they know and not the candidate they know of.