For those who don't play bridge, that's a nasty big bid for which you had better have plenty of aces, kings and queens and preferably a long, unstoppable suit. Unfortunately, until President Bush's speech Thursday, it sometimes appeared that the White House hadn't even sorted its cards. There were moments of moral and strategic clarity, as when Bush labeled Palestinian suicide bombings as the terrorism they are and conceded Israel's need to clean out West Bank cesspools spawning this madness. But then, an Arab despot would clear his throat and Bush daydreamed about Crown Prince Abdullah allowing U.S. jets to bomb Baghdad from a Saudi base.

"Wishy-washy" comes to mind. How could an administration vote for a U.N. resolution calling on Israel to withdraw its troops from the West Bank and just hours later have Bush himself speak understandingly of the bombardment of Yasser Arafat's Ramallah office complex?

"Inconsistent" may be the word you're looking for. In a blink at midweek, the White House moved from focusing on a cease-fire, which basically supported Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's position, to a willingness to move to talks on Palestinian demands before the violence ended, a dream deal for Arafat. It would also be, the Bush administration seemed not to notice, a big fat reward for Palestinian terrorism. Keep "cave in" in reserve.

Then the European Union sneezed and, lo and behold, the president calls for Israel to pull military forces out of the West Bank and dispatches Secretary of State Colin Powell for a little shuttle diplomacy. "Whiplash!" Bush's own summation was: "Enough is enough." That's a great phrase but rather glib coming from an administration that was determined to invest as little political capital as possible in one of the nation's toughest foreign accounts. And Bush's statement, as forceful as it seemed, did not draw clearly enough the line between the legitimacy of Israel's defense of its security and the depravity of the Palestinian terror.

How did we get here? It's been a bumpy ride. Let's begin by conceding Bush hates kibitzers, but that shouldn't stop us. He was a blank slate on the Middle East in the 2000 campaign. Bush would have welcomed a Bill Clinton-brokered deal just to get a big international headache over to the sidelines, even though his advisers knew how unlikely it was that any deal would stick. Bush's sympathies, such as they were, were loosely pro-Israel.

Sharon knew how to get to the new president, telling him at their first meeting: "One must understand that if last week we had five dead, it's like the United States, Mr. President, having 250 killed, or maybe even 300 people, killed by terror." And that was months before Sept. 11.

The Middle East continued at a slow boil, and in the background the White House was formulating a skeletal "peace plan" that would include the first direct call ever by a Republican administration for a Palestinian state. Sept. 11 intervened. It appeared to some, including Sharon, that Bush was building the anti-terrorism coalition on the back of Israel. And quickly Saudi Arabia demanded that the piper be paid, with Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal saying that Bush could not be an "honest broker" until he met with Arafat.

At least Bush didn't do that and finally realized that the Palestinian leader was lying to him about getting weapons runs from Iran. Bush eventually announced his support for a Palestinian state without getting into the status of Jerusalem or the right of Palestinians who departed in 1948 to return to Israel. When Palestinian violence - and Israeli response - escalated, Bush sent personal envoy Anthony C. Zinni. That deputation as well as almost every other administration move over the last four months has been unsuccessful. Bush faced increased pressure to get more personally involved.

Now, Powell is going. But amid the travel schedules, we need a declaration of vision, such as House Republican Whip Tom DeLay laid out last week: "The defense of freedom demands more from us than value-neutral brokerage. It is time for us to stand squarely against the terrorist organizations which systematically attack Israel."

Bush wasn't that clear on Thursday, and perhaps such a statement from him might not be politic in the big picture, but it would be refreshing. It would be an indication that the president sees his cards clearly and has an idea of how to play them.

Hines is a Houston Chronicle columnist based in Washington, D.C. cragg.hines@chron.com