ASHINGTON - Two weeks ago, Texas Governor George W. Bush's closest advisers met to discuss how to prepare the Republican presidential front-runner for his first debate of Campaign 2000 - and only the third of his life.
The advisers rejected the idea of hiring a speech coach, and didn't see the need to hold a ''mock'' debate, as candidates often do for practice. Instead, convinced that Bush is one of the most natural politicians ever to run for the presidency, they prepped the candidate briefly on possible questions and sent him on stage with the usual bromide to ''just be yourself.''
Bush aides said they were delighted with the results. But in the two debates that have been held in the last week, some of those who know Bush best have been surprised at his sometimes-stilted performance, especially his tendency to respond to a specific question with a generic, scripted answer. Combined with Senator John McCain's rise in New Hampshire polls, Bush's television performance has led to concerns among some Bush backers about his skills as a candidate and possible shortcomings of his on-screen persona.
One top Republican official, for example, said Bush supporters have told him that they are concerned that Bush's charm might come across on television as arrogance and that he risks seeming smug about the need for mastery on the issues.
Other backers say the debate format so far has been unfair to the governor. ''I don't think these two debates have highlighted what I consider to be his considerable skills,'' said Bush friend Mary Matalin, a top official in the 1992 presidential campaign of former President Bush. ''He is held to a different standard and he gets asked cheap-shot questions.''
Bush biographer Bill Minutaglio said the governor's performance has been surprising to many Texans.
''George W. has profited from his reputation as a blunt, forthright, honest-spoken, unafraid Texan, a truly spontaneous guy,'' said Minutaglio, author of ''First Son.'' ''Maybe now they are seeing on the air a guy who is not able to duke it out as they thought, maybe not as nimble on his feet as they hoped. He seemed to be delivering chunks of previously scripted material.''
Disputing that characterization, Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes said, ''He has been very straightforward, and he appears on television as he is, real and direct.'' Noting that Bush debated once in his 1994 campaign and again in 1998, Hughes added: ''He has now done twice as many debates.''
Despite all the talk about the importance of one-on-one ''retail politics'' in the early states, the vast majority of voters get their impression of the candidates from television, making the medium by far the most important vehicle of the campaign. While the debates have had a small national audience, they are being closely watched in the key primary states from which they have been broadcast. The day after the New Hampshire debate, McCain appeared with several former Bush supporters who said they had become convinced that the Texan was unqualified to be president.
By all accounts, Bush has many talents necessary to project himself well on television. He is an extrovert who can be charming, sometimes to a fault. In Texas, which has 18 times the population of New Hampshire, most voters know Bush from television and have elected him twice.
''You can campaign all day and night in Texas, and the majority of people see him on television,'' Bush media adviser Stuart Stevens said. ''Governor Bush is leading in almost every state in the country. People are seeing him on television and they are liking what they see. The formats of the debates are very limited. There was a 32-minute period in the first debate where he didn't get a question.''
Still, in the two GOP debates so far, Bush's smiles and laughter have been described by some commentators as smirks, and a number of his answers have clearly come straight from speech scripts - even when the questions seemed to call for a factually tailored reply. It is a pattern that has elicited some concern, even among Republican allies.
''I hear some saying that his friendly outgoing personality on TV is mistaken for a smirk and smugness,'' one senior Republican official said. ''A few have said to me, `He has to make sure that charm is not mistaken for arrogance.'''
Bush's problem may be that his engaging personality and his effortless in-person banter doesn't project in the cool medium of television, said Linda Fowler, professor of government and director of the Nelson Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College. ''His folksy speech and slang, the way he drops consonants on words - they are part of Bush's warmth,'' she said. ''But without the personal magnetism that people who've met him say is palpable, the speech just sounds sloppy, and ... unpresidential.''
Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political scientist at Claremont Graduate University in California, said, ''Bush isn't as guarded'' as you need to be on television. ''His reactions to the other candidates at times looked a little goofy and at times a little smirky. He should never assume that the eye of the camera isn't staring at him.''
These problems were especially evident at two points in Monday's debate. When Bush was asked to describe what he had learned from reading a biography of former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, the governor gave an answer about the need for America to be a world leader without saying anything about Acheson. And when Bush was asked what he would do if home heating oil prices rose in New England, he gave a Texas-centered answer about encouraging more oil exploration.
That created an opening for McCain to seize upon both questions in a markedly different manner, telling how Acheson spoke with President Harry Truman during the Korean conflict and warning that Russia's war on Chechnya may lead to a spike in oil prices.
''There was no intellectual combat'' between Bush and McCain, said Marvin Kalb, executive director of Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. Bush, Kalb said, ''is a fine television performer, but the performance lacks the gravitas that a lot of people have come to associate with the presidency.'' As for McCain, the Arizona senator ''has experience etched into his face.''
But even two of Bush's harshest critics - both senior Democratic party officials who watched the debates with keen interest - said that criticism of Bush's performance should be tempered. The two officials said that Bush looks good in his television ads, which will be far more widely viewed than the debates. They also said Bush performed well in a recent lengthy interview on NBC-TV's ''Meet the Press.''
Moreover, the Democratic officials said, Bush's performance easily could be interpreted as one marked by discipline and the intentional repetition of key themes. In the end, Bush's effort may be successful even if viewers remember only one thing, that he casts himself as a centrist ''compassionate conservative.''
''Let's not forget who Bush will be running against if he gets the nomination,'' Fowler said. ''(Vice President Al) Gore and (former Senator Bill) Bradley are not exactly Mr. Television Personality. If Bush had to run against Bill Clinton, now that would be really tough.''
John Aloysius Farrell of the Globe Washington Bureau contributed to this report.
