o the most exciting Republican presidential primary in my lifetime came to town this week, and I voted for ... Bill Bradley.
Wait, let me rephrase that: I voted against Al Gore. With his disgraceful truckling to the race-baiting Al Sharpton, Bradley disqualified himself months ago as a worthy contender for president; I could never have been for him, even if he hadn't been the most left-wing candidate in the race. But it was clear by Tuesday that Bradley was about to exit the race, so it was safe to vote for him as a way of protesting Gore.
Needless to say, Gore didn't notice my protest. So why for the first time since I began voting in presidential elections did I boycott the GOP presidential primary? Voters by the millions swarmed to the John McCain-George W. Bush showdown, and I couldn't bring myself to vote for either one?
Well - no.
Certainly I would prefer either man to the Democrats' champion. I am not sure the country can withstand four more years of what McCain dubbed ''the truth-twisting politics of Bill Clinton and Al Gore.'' If it isn't universally obvious by now just how dishonest and ruthless the vice president can be in the pursuit of power, it will be by November.
But the Republicans owe the voters more than candidates who are merely not as bad as the incumbents. And for all the excitement and energy of the GOP contest, neither McCain nor Bush, it seemed to me on Tuesday, had made the case that he was the right man to recapture the White House for his party.
For starters, a Republican nominee ought to have a clear philosophy of governance. It ought to be evident that there are basic conservative principles that would be the cornerstone of his presidency. Yet who can say, even now, what the cornerstone of a Bush or McCain administration would be?
''What Does W. Stand For?'' asked The New Republic in a headline last spring. It was a question no one seemed able to answer, least of all the candidate. Well into the summer, Bush was flatly refusing to take stands on issues. ''I will be glad to answer all those questions once I get out in the course of the campaign,'' he would say when reporters asked for his views. All the while, of course, he was raising millions of dollars and collecting endorsements by the barrel.
Eventually, he began delivering formal speeches and issuing position papers. But to this day, it is far from apparent that there is a core of ideas that informs Bush's approach to government or that he has given much thought to why he wants to be president. And he often sounds hopelessly out of his depth. Does he have an opinion, he was asked late last year, on Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin? ''I really don't,'' Bush answered. ''I will if I'm the president.''
If Bush's Republican philosophy of government was murky, meanwhile, McCain's was nonexistent. With few exceptions, the only issues on which he carved out clear positions were the ones on which he abandoned his party's conservative ideology of limited government and greater freedom. On campaign finance and tobacco, he stood for a vast increase in federal power; on taxes, he came out against meaningful cuts in every bracket, the only path to genuine relief.
As Rich Lowry of National Review astutely observed, McCain campaigned for president largely on the way he campaigned for president. Instead of running on issues, he ran on mood and feel: Vote for me because I'm an insurgent, because I pledge to clean up politics, because I'll return your government to you, because I'm ornery and unscripted, because I'm not your typical Republican. Independents and Democrats, especially those in the press, loved hearing a Republican talk this way. But for conservatives and traditional Republicans, McCain was like Oakland: There was no there there.
What kept me away from the GOP primary, though, was more than just the mush at the heart of the Bush and McCain campaigns. I was also repelled by the candidates' cheap shots and nasty attacks.
I cannot remember a Republican primary fight that sank to the depths of this one. Slimy e-mails accusing McCain of fathering illegitimate children. Sleazy ''Catholic voter alerts'' implying that Bush is a Protestant bigot. Ronald Reagan's famous 11th Commandment has always been honored more in the breach than the observance. But McCain and Bush went way past the foul line in speaking ill of their fellow Republican.
Sure, the Texas governor deserved a smack for making his stand at Bob Jones University - but an unhinged assault on Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as ''forces of evil'' and ''agents of intolerance'' who resemble Sharpton and the vile Louis Farrakhan? And, sure, it was fair to whack McCain from the left, since he was wooing left-leaning voters - but to slam him as a foe of clean air? Or an enemy of women with breast cancer? At their worst, these two behaved like disciples of Al Gore. And it is Gore who will benefit from the wounds they inflicted on their party.
After eight years of scandal and deceit in the executive branch, this campaign season was tailor-made for an inspiring Republican message of honesty, hopefulness, decency, and liberty. What Bush and McCain produced was something rather different. Something rather less. It was nothing I cared to vote for.
Jeff Jacoby is a Globe columnist.
