Steve Forbes, Mr. Nice Guy

But it was not economics the congressman had on his mind. He said he hoped Forbes wouldn’t air attack ads against Bush like the Forbes spots that savaged Bob Dole in the 1996 Republican presidential race. And by the way, Dreier said, he’d been talking to Bush and mentioned that Forbes would make a great treasury secretary in a Bush administration. Bush responded favorably to the idea, he added. Forbes was not amused. He told Dreier to ask Bush what cabinet post he’d like in a Forbes administration.

Dreier’s call wasn’t the only one to Forbes with a similar message: Refrain from attacking Bush with searing TV commercials. Several callers — friends of Forbes who are backing Bush’s bid for the GOP presidential nomination — also suggested Forbes consider dropping out of the race and running for the open Senate seat in New Jersey. Bush himself spoke several times to financier Dick Gilder, a Forbes friend and fund-raiser, in hopes of averting a Forbes television fusillade.

So, did the calls, instigated by Bush strategist Karl Rove, work? It’s impossible to know for sure, but Forbes did wait until two weeks before the Iowa caucuses on January 24 to air his first anti-Bush commercial. And it is relatively mild — mild, that is, compared with the ferocious ads assailing Dole in the 1996 race. Then, Forbes went on the air with anti-Dole ads within weeks of announcing for the nomination. And the ads, in one form or another, ran for three months. Dole, though he won the nomination, believes his campaign never fully recovered.

Forbes and campaign manager Bill Dal Col insist the private calls didn’t spook them. (Forbes says at least three calls were Bush-inspired.) Rather, they were waiting for a political opening, which came when Bush announced his plan to reduce taxes a few weeks ago. “He led with his chin,” says Forbes. Once Bush claimed to be a tax-cutter, Dal Col says he called consultant John McLaughlin and said, “Let’s go” with an anti-Bush commercial. The ad features Mary Williams, who runs an anti-tax group in Texas. She says Bush broke his pledge not to propose increases in sales or business taxes.

At least three members of Forbes’s campaign team, however, wanted TV attacks on Bush (and even on senator John McCain) to begin much earlier. One adviser says Forbes held back because he enjoyed “being Mr. Positive. Nobody wants to be thought ill of.” But Dal Col says they simply decided the campaign shouldn’t “fight the last war. Any campaign can take down any candidate now in two weeks, as long as you’re willing not to win.” What Dal Col suggested, in other words, was that there’s a potential backlash from airing strongly negative ads. This is exactly what callers from Bush’s orbit had warned Forbes.

Bush aides don’t claim credit for delaying attacks by Forbes. But they suspect they helped. One friend of Forbes says Rove’s machinations played a major part. The Rove effort was two-pronged, the friend says: first, public statements that sharp attacks would wind up hurting Forbes; then the phone calls. Says Dreier: “Steve has had many friends say to him, ‘Let’s not go hard negative.'” And Bush advisers think Gilder, the Forbes fund-raiser, and Forbes’s own brothers were critical in keeping the campaign from going on the attack earlier and more harshly.

Bush himself may have unnerved Forbes, a Bush aide says. In the January 10 debate in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Bush looked directly at Forbes and winked as Forbes was criticizing his record on taxes as governor of Texas. Forbes quickly turned his head. According to the Bush aide, Forbes went out of his way after that debate to avoid contact with Rove, whom he’d known when both were presidentially appointed members of the Board for International Broadcasting. Rove and George W. actually engineered Forbes’s reappointment by President Bush as board chairman in 1991, the Bush aide said. “George W. Bush was responsible for continuing Steve Forbes’s presence on the national stage,” the aide added.

At the Michigan debate, Forbes fervently defended the anti-Bush spot. “The ad is accurate,” he declared. “And I think that’s what makes the American people cynical about politics. Pledges are made and then quickly forgotten after the election.” Bush argued that he signed a tax cut, ran on his record, and was overwhelmingly reelected in 1998 — and that should dispose of any allegations that he isn’t a true tax-cutter. To this, Forbes said, “Given your opposition and given that you’re a good guy, I would have voted for you, too. But you did break that pledge.”

For his part, Rove dismisses the Forbes ad as “too little, too late, too convoluted.” Nonetheless, Bush quickly aired a commercial of his own that responds to charges by both Forbes and McCain. It extols Bush as a tax-cutter. The Bush campaign also intends to exploit an appearance made by Forbes at the governor’s mansion in Austin in 1997. He spoke to the Governor’s Council, made up of big donors to Bush’s campaigns for governor. Rove has lined up roughly 30 attendees ready to declare that Forbes lauded Bush’s efforts in the same tax fight in which he now criticizes Bush for breaking a promise.

Where does all this leave Bush and Forbes pre-Iowa caucuses? Though McCain isn’t competing in Iowa, Bush is more worried about him than Forbes. Still, he’d like Forbes to go away. Bush isn’t fond of Forbes. He was incensed when Forbes spoke at a fund-raiser in 1998 for his chief nemesis in the Texas GOP, Tom Pauken. But Bush ought to be grateful that Forbes hasn’t treated him as he did Dole four years ago. The harshest words coming from the Forbes campaign have been Dal Col’s, not Forbes’s. And the truth is, Forbes would make a pretty good treasury secretary in a Bush administration.

Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD and co-host of The Beltway Boys on the Fox News Channel.