Earlier Britain's respected Financial Times endorsed John Kerry as the best choice for US president.

"He is plainly the better choice," the weekly said in a lengthy editorial that excoriated the record of President George W. Bush on everything from health and the environment to his handling of the war in Iraq.

"As observers, reporters, and commentators we will hold (Kerry) to the highest standards of honesty and performance," the editorial said. "For now, as citizens, we hope for his victory."

New Yorker Editor David Remnick told the Washington Post that he had no problem in breaking with tradition to endorse a candidate.

"The magazine's not a museum; it's a living thing that evolves," Remnick said, adding that he and his editors reached a consensus without consulting the magazine's owner, Si Newhouse.

While endorsing Kerry, the magazine devoted the lion's share of its editorial to slamming the Bush administration's four years in power.

"Its record has been one of failure, arrogance, and -- strikingly for a team that prided itself on crisp professionalism -- incompetence," it said.

The commentary portrayed a president living within "a self-created bubble of faith-based affirmation" -- unable to brook dissent and isolated from genuine debate.

It also laid down a litany of issues on which the magazine said Bush had short-changed the American public -- the economy, health care, the environment, social security, the judiciary, national security, foreign policy, the war in Iraq, the fight against terrorism.

"In every crucial area of concern to Americans, Kerry offers a clear, corrective alternative to Bush's curious blend of smugness, radicalism, and demagoguery," it said.

"Pollsters like to ask voters which candidate they'd most like to have a beer with, and on that metric Bush always wins. We prefer to ask which candidate is better suited to the governance of our nation."

The New Yorker editors were not wholly uncritical of Kerry, acknowledging that he could be "cautious to a fault" and remarking that his failure to aggressively attack Bush's record until late in the campaign had been a missed opportunity.

Britain's respected Financial Times endorsed Kerry yesterday as the best choice, saying incumbent George W. Bush had polarized the world with his radical foreign policy and led a reckless economic policy.

The paper, one of the world's leading financial dailies, called Bush "a polarizer, exploiting the war on terror to cow domestic opposition and divide the world into Them and Us."

"Over the past three years, the gap between ambition and reality has created what could be termed a 'Bush bubble'," it said.

During that time since the September 11 2001 attacks in the United States, Bush's "radical, faith-based politics" and his inability to recognize his mistakes had led to a disastrous occupation in Iraq and taken the wrong tack in the war on terrorism, it charged.

"Mr. Bush's flaw is his stubborn reluctance to admit mistakes and to adjust personnel and policy. Blind faith in military power as a tool for change has too often influenced decision-making," it said.

"The US needs allies in the struggle against terrorism but Mr. Bush's crusading moralism has alienated the rest of the world, and a large constituency at home already fearful of the religious right."

But the paper cautioned that Kerry, the Democratic senator, "still has much to prove" on domestic policy and lacks pizazz, but values international alliances and can recognize his mistakes.

"He owes his rise more to opposition to Mr. Bush than loyalty to his own cause. But on balance, he is the better, safer choice," it said.

Moreover, it said, Kerry would return a sound fiscal policy to Washington, instead of Bush's short-term economic fix in the form of tax cuts and low federal interest rates, it went on.

"A President Kerry would probably revert to the fiscal responsibility of the Clinton years... Coupled with the need for international economic policy cooperation... this could be a recipe for success," judged the financial daily.

The world's other influential financial pages have not issued direct endorsements, but the Wall Street Journal is regularly critical of Kerry. The Economist weekly issues its endorsement for the November 2 US vote in its edition out this Friday.