From 1983 - 93, I wrote speeches in Washington, D.C., for Presidents Reagan and Bush. Later, I returned to write books and do radio/TV in my native Upstate New York. I am often asked how Upstate and D.C. differ. The two so cleave as to inhabit different worlds.

I do not suggest that Washington is bereft of charm. Having seen each up-close, I do suggest that Upstaters are more civil, less self-absorbed, than Washington's permanent aristocracy.

D.C.'s ruling class links consultants, lobbyists, preppies, pinstriped flacks, and lawyers. As even Washington Post polls confirm, they are affluent, well-educated, and liberal. They dub themselves tastemakers and trendsetters - but in truth are front-runners who have a fetish for the fashionable.

I call them SSBPs - self-styled better people. They pine for power, pant for hipness, and call themselves the beautiful people. They extol the same deities: Chanel, Armani, passing business cards, trading barbs on who's up and down. To those of use from, but never of, the capital, they have all the depth of a 30-second ad.

Four hundred miles north of Washington lies a different world. Here live teachers and farmers and retirees in postcard towns like Geneva and Geneseo. Like D.C., they frequent museums and theaters - but know little of designer gowns or toni Georgetown dinner parties. They know that what counts is what we are, not what we have.

SSBPs are users. Upstaters are givers. Upstate scents of Mayberry sans Southern accent. Washington is an Oscar Wilde dinner party. Its permanent establishment reeks of a passage from The Sound of Music: "Nothing is as wonderful as I."

To me, Upstate will always mean the most remarkable person of my life. My grandmother lived in the town of Pike, population 400. Unlike SSBPs, she never attended boarding school, skied in Aspen, or vacationed in Belize. She aimed higher, and succeeded: Raising two sons, heading her family with valiance, and flaunting a hungry yearning to learn.

My grandmother resolved moral dilemmas in the Bible. She would not have understood how to Washington, D.C., dilemmas mean whether to eat at Dominique's or The Palm. She used terms like noble - kind - thoughtful - unselfish. By contrast, they are as irrelevant to SSBPs as Sunday school in Hades.

Casey Stengel often said, "You can look it up." Washington is where I worked. Upstate is what I love.

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