McCain isn't quite what Jewish conservatives are looking for this year. It may not matter.

Sen. John McCain was wearing his cocky, flying-ace grin when he rose a few weeks ago to address the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. He left 90 minutes later looking slightly shell-shocked. What happened in between was an object lesson in the pitfalls of campaigning for Jewish votes in the new millennium. Especially if you're a Republican.

Like most Republicans who address Jewish audiences, McCain talked foreign policy. He knew his domestic ideas wouldn't win friends there. So he hammered a pet theme, that the Clinton administration has pursued a "feckless, photo-op-driven foreign policy."

Still, he allowed, Clinton deserves credit for "the glaring, wonderful exceptions of Northern Ireland and the Middle East." In Middle East peacemaking, "all of us are very proud of the progress made," he said, pausing for applause.

No applause came. This crowd doesn't kvell over Clinton's peacemaking. When question-time came, eight of the 11 questioners offered thinly veiled attacks on the peace process. Why give money to the terrorist Arafat? Why trust the dictator Assad? What about Hamas? McCain fielded them gamely, but with apparent surprise. One questioner, Orthodox leader Mandell Ganchrow, asked how anyone could consider trading strategic Golan terrain for mere technological safeguards. McCain's reply: "I'm not smart enough to know exactly what technology we have to know about, and I would leave it to the experts -- especially the Israeli military."

It was a jarring sight, an Arizona gentile lecturing Jewish community leaders on Israeli military know-how. It could almost make you wonder who these guys are and how they got to be American Jewry's spokesmen.

McCain's problem was more subtle, though. He wasn't there to study leadership. He was trolling for Jewish votes. That's always a tricky endeavor for GOP candidates. Committed Jewish Republicans are perhaps 15 percent of the overall Jewish population. Reaching beyond them usually means wooing Middle East hawks -- Orthodox Jews, defense buffs, hardcore Zionists -- by painting Democrats as weak-kneed peaceniks.

Lately that ploy is getting even trickier. With Israel preparing for sweeping concessions, courting the hawks amounts to dissing the Israeli government. That could offend the other 90 percent of the Jews, mainline Republicans included. It also risks appearing reckless and irresponsible, which presidential candidates hate to do.

Without those hawks, though, you're trapped at 15 percent. What's a Republican to do?

The Republicans' Jewish dilemma echoes their larger quandary this year. They need to reach out to the center without alienating their conservative base. Yet whenever they feint to one side, they're burned on the other.

The quandary is built into the American primary system and afflicts both parties. The Republicans have it worse this year, though. Their two main candidates have come to embody the conflicting impulses, making the primary battle a seeming war of Light and Darkness. George W. Bush, the party establishment candidate, supposedly represents hardcore Christian conservatism. Insurgent McCain is appealing to Democrats and independents.

This worries party regulars. Bush looks more and more the rabid partisan as time goes on. McCain, meanwhile, is drawing people who never before voted in primaries. Bush will probably win the nomination in July, given party politics. But his very victory, despite McCain's popularity, could infuriate those newcomers who thought they were finally making a difference. Picture Prague, 1968.

It's not terribly fair, of course. McCain is at least as conservative as Bush, on issues from abortion rights to the environment. As for tolerance and inclusiveness, McCain's chosen themes, it's Bush who actually built a career around them. Bush, in fact, reportedly plans to be the first president to put blacks in both top foreign policy posts -- Colin Powell as secretary of state and campaign aide Condoleeza Rice as national security adviser.

McCain, by contrast, voted for Kenneth Starr's impeachment of Bill Clinton. But no matter. McCain has Bush painted into a corner.

That, at least, is the lament of mainstream Jewish Republicans these days, as they survey the charred landscape of their primary season. Jewish backing for Republicans could drop to historic lows this fall.

"There's a concern that it's having a political impact, yes," says Mayor Norm Coleman of St. Paul, Minn., a Jewish Republican who chairs Bush's Minnesota campaign. "The nature of politics is that you try to push your opponents off to an extreme. But that's not who George W. Bush is. This Jewish Republican is very comfortable with George Bush, and my landsmen should be just as comfortable."

Not everyone is listening. Inquiries around the country suggest an odd division among Jewish Republicans. In the East, Jewish GOP donors and shakers are generally sticking with Bush. In California, by contrast, "they're moving over to McCain in large numbers," says Jayne Shapiro, a Republican who's running for state Assembly from the heavily Democratic west side of Los Angeles. "A lot of people are frustrated with Bush and where he stands."

Neoconservative Jewish intellectuals are also splitting down the middle. Reagan-era defense hawks like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz have signed with Bush, giving his team an unexpectedly pro-Israel tilt. Domestic policy wonks, led by Bill Kristol and his Weekly Standard crew, are backing McCain. McCain's foreign policy team has strikingly few Jewish neocons, relying instead on an odd melange of fading Republican stars, like Henry Kissinger and Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and Carter-era retreads like James Schlesinger and Zbigniew Brzinski.

Is there any hope for Jewish Republicans this fall? Surprisingly, yes. Hardcore Jewish hawks seem angry enough at the Clinton administration over its peace policies to vote for just about anyone who isn't a Democrat, to punish Clinton. "We've seen Clinton's pressures on Israel," says Orthodox leader Ganchrow. "Since becoming vice president, Al Gore has been very closely aligned with Clinton's record. The big question is, how much of that is really Gore and how much is the pressure of being vice president?"

Hardcore hawks make up about 10 percent of the Jewish vote. Bush won't draw them, given his family name. If it's McCain, though, a few careful words about moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem could deliver them en bloc. Add mainstream Jewish Republicans, plus the 5 percent who once voted Perot, and McCain could reach 30 percent of the Jewish vote. That's about as high as Republicans go.

Will it make a difference? You bet. Jewish voters will number about 3 million out of some 100 million votes total. Thirty percent of that is just under a million votes.

That's enough to put the grin back on any flyboy's face.

J.J. Goldberg writes a weekly column for The Jewish Journal