It's understandable. The Undecideds have become the darlings of the media. Networks recruited Undecideds for postdebate discussion groups. In some cases, Undecideds were allowed to participate in the debates themselves. I think of the senatorial campaign debate in Missouri. The first question came from an Undecided.

It was more or less a Duh, who the heck are you guys? kind of question, although the actual wording was more like, Can either of you tell me why I should bother to vote?

No wonder so many people are upset. Many of the Undecided are simply Uninformed. That's what people have been telling me.

Still, I feel a certain kinship with the Undecideds, and I'd like to explain to our more partisan brothers and sisters just how it is that a voter could be, even at this late date, an Undecided.

First of all, it's rare -- almost unheard of -- for the two major parties to each have a first-class candidate. It happened this year. Each party had one. Unfortunately, neither Bill Bradley nor John McCain won his party's nomination. In fact, this year marked a return to the era of the smoke-filled room. Long before the primary season began, political insiders and money-men had gotten together and decided on their respective party's candidate. Both George W. Bush and Al Gore had most of the money and the political machinery locked up well before the first primary vote was cast.

So we were stuck with these two guys. Instead of having a small-town kid who rode his basketball talents to Princeton and beyond, we got a senator's kid who rode his family connections to Harvard. Instead of a legitimate American hero, we got a president's kid who rode his family connections to Yale.

At least, this is the jaundiced view that a lot of Bradley and McCain supporters took into the general election campaign. And what did they see?

In the debates, and in the overall campaign, Bush has appeared as likable -- it's his big selling point! -- but not quite up to speed on the details of his various proposals. There is nothing wrong with being likable, but happily, there are a lot of likable people around. So you watch Bush stumble through some of his answers, and you think, This guy is where he is strictly because he's George W. Bush. He wouldn't be here if he were George W. Smith. It's hard to get excited when you feel that way about a guy.

Gore, on the other hand, is very much up on the details of the various policy proposals, but he is not likable at all. He comes across as artificial, essentially phony, and it doesn't help that we know he hired a consultant to teach him how to be an alpha male.

What's more, he can't seem to tell the truth. It was embarrassing for Democrats to have to defend Bill Clinton after he wagged his finger at us and told us that he had not had sex with Monica -- Everybody lies about sex! -- and now it's just plain tiresome that we're being asked to defend Gore's constant embellishments. Oh, we can blame the media for dwelling on his lies, or we can say that all politicians are dishonest, but really, it's hard to get behind a man who has such a loose relationship with the truth.

I could be completely wrong about both these guys. Maybe Bush is so darned likable that he would have risen from the middle class, and maybe Gore is so darned good on policy that his constant fibbing can be forgiven, but still, it's easy for me to see how somebody can be an Undecided.