Kansas governor dishes up bland but charming platitudes: impressive style but disappointing speech.

Sometimes being even a few minutes late for your next appointment can have ruinous consequences. Several minutes late to a recent speaking engagement with the National Conference of Editorial Writers, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius could have reached the top floor of Kansas City's Intercontinental Hotel and delivered a dry, paint-by-numbers address that she's probably doled out to audiences a thousand times before.

And that's basically what she did this time, too. With a strong and confident voice she took a series of jabs at the Bush administration--though never not too harshly. She mentioned a few of her big accomplishments as governor-but only briefly. She even began the brief affair with a disarming little comment--"Please, eat your soup"--to help loosen up the journalists gathered before her. Her charm appeared to be clicking from the get-go.

Fifteen minutes down the line it had become a little easier to see how Sebelius had become governor in the first place. She looks and sounds and seems every bit the part she was hired to play.

All of a sudden she was dashing away toward the elevators, on her way to yet another event. No time to shake hands or share a few stories. Not even time to enjoy her own share of delicious hotel soup. I don't know that I'd enjoy being a governor if I didn't have time to enjoy life's little moments, although I also probably wouldn't mind making what state chief executives regularly get paid. I wonder if money, and the infrequent differences they inject into people's make the constanting to the next event worth the trouble.

Toward the beginning of her address, Sebelius said that the opportunity to reform government begins with credibility. It's the type of disarming, impossible-to-disagree-with statement that infiltrated her every breath. For instance, it turns out that one of the essentials to restoring trust in the public sector is common sense. Really? You don't say?

It's tough to argue with her thesis that the states are the ones practicing good government these days, and as a result are enjoying a measure of trust that Congress (and particularly the White House, in her opinion) does without. She believes in public education, in hard work, and in health care for America's Baby Boomers and uninsured children.

Is it possible Sebelius could have been more polite than she was? As she continued, I couldn't help thinking that she wasn't a governor exactly, but a candidate trying to make the best impression possible on a group of reporters. Was that the case?

Before Sebelius made a break for it, one of our colleagues asked about the degree to which people in government try to stay in touch with regular Americans. Mostly she used this as an opportunity to remind listeners that politicians in the nation's capital have lost their way. "The way they make rules in Washington is a bit broken," she said.

She concluded by complimenting Ken Burns' PBS documentary "The War" and praising citizens for being "way out in front of the politicians." That's astute politics. Talking kindly about "The Greatest Generation" doesn't give an opinion writer much to work with.

I would have enjoyed telling the Kansas governor that she's very good at what she does. It would have been nice, too, if this intelligent woman had spoken off the cuff for even five minutes about some of the real problems ailing our country. I wish this twenty-year veteran of the political arena had taken off the proverbial kid gloves and told us what she really thought of President Bush.

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Now that would have been a speech.

Scott Shackelford is editorial page editor of the Northwest Arkansas Times. Email: scotts@nwarktimes.com