WASHINGTON -- America's newspaper editors, who can be as self-important as any politician, got a look at the two major party contenders for president last week. On Wednesday, a punctual President Bush addressed a joint luncheon of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and a publishers' group, the Newspaper Association of America. On Friday, Sen. John Kerry arrived unfashionably late at the concluding lunch of the ASNE convention.

		Michael McGough is an editor at large in the PG's National Bureau (mmcgough@ nationalpress.com).

Comparisons are inevitable, and I'm afraid they didn't favor Kerry, even for those in the audience who preferred the Massachusetts senator or his message to the alternative. My guest at both the Bush and Kerry luncheons was a student from Columbia University, who kept count of the times Bush mispronounced "nuclear" as "nu-cu-lar." Still, notwithstanding that score of wrongs, he conceded that Bush was more articulate than he had expected.

True, as long as you don't equate "articulate" with "eloquent." Bush's semi-extemporaneous remarks certainly articulated what he believed in -- free markets, death to the "death tax" and no second thoughts about the wisdom of toppling Saddam Hussein, a man who after all "paid suiciders to kill Jews." (Suiciders?)

Unlike Ronald Reagan, to whom he is sometimes compared by cultured despisers, Bush didn't give the impression that he was mouthing some adviser's formulation. Bush clearly could cite his administration's policy by chapter, if not by verse.

I remember attending a briefing Reagan held for editorial writers shortly after his inauguration. When the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict arose, Reagan almost robotically invoked U.N. Resolution 242.

When Bush defended his endorsement of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's peace plan, which arguably flouts that resolution, he was inelegant but engaged. "The whole world should have said, 'Thank you, Ariel,' " he said . (Kerry, by the way, was equally approving of the Sharon plan, even though Bush's endorsement of it alienated the allies that Kerry says America should be cultivating.)

But Bush in his appearance before the editors was more than clear about what he believed. He was charming, convivial and funny. With an eye to the long head table of newspaper executives, Bush greeted "the Politburo -- I mean, my fellow Americans." He freely admitted at one point that "the world is always accusing me of not speaking too good."

Kerry, up close and personal, was distant and impersonal, though vastly more eloquent, not to say grammatical, than Bush. Perhaps Kerry felt obliged to live up to the peculiar introduction in which an ASNE official likened the senator to Seabiscuit, the uncharismatic race horse who still won the laurels.

But boy was Kerry stiff, even (or especially) when channeling Bill Clinton. Like Clinton, Kerry in his speech championed those who "work hard, pay their bills and do right by their families and their country." But Clinton's eerie ability to connect emotionally was conspicuously lacking.

It might seem churlish to dwell on what might seem like superficial characteristics. It also plays into an acknowledged Republican strategy of caricaturing Kerry as an aloof rich kid (as if Bush matriculated at the School of Hard Knocks) who probably speaks French to Teresa in the privacy of one of their many homes.

But even quantitative-minded political scientists recognize the importance of personality in politics. Personality, after all, propelled Sen. John Edwards to the position of being Kerry's last standing serious rival. And it came in handy even for a policy wonk like Clinton. Of course, the editors in the audience at both speeches inevitably focused on style over substance because neither Bush nor Kerry deigned to use the forum as a venue for a major policy address. Both the president and the senator sounded familiar themes, though Kerry's PR people packaged his speech as the unveiling of a new "Contract with America's Middle Class" -- his rejoinder to the Republicans' largely forgotten Contract with America.

Not everyone in the room was charmed by Bush and what has been called, accurately, his "frat boy" persona. My student friend wasn't the only one who cringed at all the "nu-cu-lars" or at Bush's odd habit, reminiscent of a character in a 1930s gangster movie, of prefacing his observations with: "See..." His repeated references to "the Brits" probably irked any members of Her Majesty's Government in the audience. Certainly the journalists-turned-professors who stood up to ask questions probably resented Bush's request for questions from "some real editors."

That said, Bush came across as authentic and unfiltered, even when he sounded like Edward G. Robinson. Kerry, by contrast, seemed studied to the point of contrivance. One exchange with a questioner was unfortunately emblematic. Asked about the disfavor attached to the world "liberal," Kerry -- instead of pointing out that so-called liberals are the people who stood up for his cherished middle class -- piously protested: "I'm not much for labels. They do a disservice to political dialogue."

The questioner did not respond, Steve Martin-style, "Well, excuse me!" But if the same exchange occurs on a televised debate in the fall, expect Kerry's frat-boy opponent to say, with a smile, "I don't think he answered your question."