Read his lips, not his face

There isn’t a reality show yet called “Trading Faces,” but you kind of wish John F. Kerry and John Edwards could swap. Edwards has an easy, open face to Kerry’s darker, Lincolnesque one. Kerry’s face could tell us more than we know about him, but it doesn’t. Put him in one of those automated photo booths and you’d probably get back a dozen pictures of the very same man and the very same moment.

Here in L.A., people aspire to the expressionless face. They pay lots of money for it, in fact. But Kerry’s face in the context of this presidential campaign is a problem; he seems emotionally undisclosed. His face conveys substance but can also give him the appearance of droning on when he speaks. This, anyway, is what television does to it, and it is on television that Kerry will have his most captive audiences, at the Democratic National Convention beginning July 26 and during three nationally televised debates with President Bush.

Last week, in the days after Kerry and Edwards came out as a ticket in a joint appearance on “60 Minutes,” where they engaged in much limb-touching, Jon Stewart of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” lampooned Kerry’s lack of warmth, calling Edwards Kerry’s “trophy running mate.” Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” called Edwards “fabric softener” for the ticket.

The Matthews metaphor, it turns out, works better than the Stewart one. Without getting into too much detail about the definition of laundry, fabric softener is an accessory in the process of cleaning one’s clothes -- not essential to getting them clean but something that makes a garment feel softer and fuzzier.

And so, presumably, Edwards will humanize Kerry, make him more relatable.

On “Hardball,” Matthews was also complaining that Kerry doesn’t really know how to smile.

“He bites his lower lip!” Matthews screamed, describing the rather technical process by which Kerry accomplishes the facial gesture.

It’s true that on a presidential trail, the smile is important, a kind of Pilates of the face. And the face is where Kerry remains most enigmatic, a puzzlement. His face is preferable to other faces, like Howard Dean’s (last seen shrieking in the wee hours of a long campaign night). Kerry’s face will probably never frighten people. But nor is it likely to make him more embraceable.

To the extent that TV frames people’s opinions of the candidates, increased television exposure of Kerry will increase his presumed charisma problem, the sense that he’s too serious and negative, particularly in contrast with Bush’s face, which tries to keep up with his cowboy sound bites when it’s not pitching boyish optimism.

On the plus side for Kerry, he is the first presidential candidate in my lifetime whose face seems ready for Mt. Rushmore. It has a sculpted permanence -- long and sharp-angled, the eyes carved downward.

When discussing this, it is important to separate Kerry the man from Kerry the face. (I don’t know what my face is doing half the time and have concluded I can’t be responsible for its actions. My face has a mind of its own.)

Kerry the man talks about the botched execution of the war in Iraq, about the rising cost of prescription drugs. But often Kerry the face can’t quite get on board with the urgency of the message. When “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl gushed that Kerry’s energy level seemed boosted by Edwards’ sudden companionship, Kerry responded, “Well, certainly I hope so. I want it to. I love it.” As he spoke, Kerry’s face looked on. The face had no comment.

“But he’s definitely got energy without me, you know,” Edwards chimed in helpfully. He and his face seemed to have gone out drinking and become buddies ages ago.

Who knows how Kerry feels, going through these pro forma TV rituals of appearing menschy and at ease? On “60 Minutes” he claimed not to worry much about his charisma problem; this face had gotten him elected four times. And rhetorically, anyway, Kerry’s most alive when attacked by the opponent. Challenged by Stahl about the Republican charge that his populist economic policies contradict that he is a mega-millionaire, Kerry retorted: “Is this coming from millionaire George Bush? And millionaire Dick Cheney? And millionaire Rumsfeld?” His back was up, he was apparently indignant, and he was showing off a quick-witted fearlessness; there was nuance in his answer. Meanwhile, that face didn’t move.

Will this matter? For all the crimes and misdemeanors he tried to pin on Bush, filmmaker Michael Moore’s most convincing argument in “Fahrenheit 9/11” seemed to be that a face like Bush’s didn’t belong in the role of president. “Just look at it,” the movie kept telling us, “look at this guy’s face!” The movie was a montage of bad Bush face moments, moments we hadn’t seen, none worse than the apparently paralyzed Bush face when, sitting in a Florida elementary school classroom, he was given word that a plane had flown into one of the World Trade Center towers.

When the Kerry-Edwards “60 Minutes” segment ended, I flipped to C-SPAN. There I happened to catch tape of a Bush stump speech in York, Pa. (In terms of unexpurgated TV access to the two men running for president, C-SPAN is blessedly free of nosy-neighbor pundits. I say this as someone who spent last week channel-surfing in vain for the candidates’ stump appearances; by the end of the week I was anxious, exhausted and confused. Also, I kept running into Newt Gingrich.)

In York, Bush gave a stump speech that went pretty well with his face. As always, however, he displayed his troubling habit of grinning at inappropriate times. Like when he talks about Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein and how we’re safer now. If Kerry has difficulty physically accomplishing a smile, Bush smiles too much, constantly, as if to say, “See? See what I mean?” It’s a patronizing habit. But it will be Kerry who will wind up branded as the candidate of condescension.

“Sen. Kerry is the most liberal member of the Senate,” Bush said, repeating a line he’d use all week. “And he chose as his running mate the fourth most liberal member of the Senate. In Massachusetts, that’s what they call balancing the ticket.” Somewhere, perhaps, Kerry was looking on. Ready to respond, expressionless.

Paul Brownfield can be contacted at paul.brownfield

@latimes.com.