THE FORBES FACTOR

Forbes is not the frontrunner for 2000. He may not even have a good shot at the nomination. But he does have a real chance, and that wasn’t true before his surge over the past six months. He’s managed this much by defying the old rule that 90 percent of politics is first impressions (a rule Dan Quayle, for one, has yet to overcome). Forbes made a bad impression with his one-issue, slash-and-burn presidential candidacy in the 1996 Republican primaries. He was, as Ron Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times put it recently, “the man with the goofy grin and the serious bank account.” Since he talked obsessively about a 17 percent flat tax, he appealed chiefly to a narrow sliver of voters, mostly supply-siders and libertarians.

Now he has changed his image and broadened his base, in part by taking up the themes of social and religious conservatives, who constitute roughly a third of the GOP electorate. They have responded warmly. And his denunciations of the budget deal (“an abomination,” “a monstrosity”) have touched a chord with the multitude of GOP conservatives disenchanted with Republican leaders in Congress. Today, Forbes has by far the strongest conservative message of any leading Republican. When both he and Senate majority leader Trent Lott addressed a California gathering of big donors in August, Lott got polite applause, Forbes a standing ovation. The fact that Lott spoke by phone and Forbes was there in person had something to do with this, but it was clear whose ideology the crowd preferred.

Forbes has given Christian conservatives two things they crave: time and respect. He’s spoken so often at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in 1997 that he is practically a faculty member. He had lunch with Ralph Reed, who was favorably impressed, and with James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who wasn’t. Forbes met with Life Forum, a group of anti-abortion leaders, for two private grillings last April. When he spelled out his opposition to abortion, “they ate it up,” says Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation. (Weyrich is committed to Sen. John Ashcroft of Missouri in 2000.) As for Republican regulars, they like Forbes’s availability. “He’s willing to go to small markets and spend time,” says Rusty Paul, the party’s state chairman in Georgia. Any presidential candidate will come to Atlanta, Paul says, but Forbes agreed to speak in Albany, Brunswick, and Sea Island.

No Republican is quicker off the mark these days than Forbes. In September, Bill Paxon introduced a bill to jettison the IRS and tax code on December 31, 2000. Paxon called a half-dozen Republican presidential types for their help in pushing it. All agreed it was a good idea and asked for more information — except Forbes. “Within 24 hours, he had a game plan to help me promote it,” says Paxon. “He sees an opportunity, seizes it, and moves quickly.” A few days later, Forbes joined Paxon at a press conference on Capitol Hill. On September 26, within hours after Rusty Paul learned Georgia senator Paul Coverdell would have a well-financed Democratic opponent in 1998, Forbes was on the phone to offer help.

For the time being, Forbes, 50, is holding on to his day job as editor-in- chief of the biweekly business magazine that bears his name. Writing his ” Fact and Comment” column hasn’t put a crimp in his travel. On September 25, he spent the day in New Hampshire, where Patrick Buchanan won the primary in 1996. At every event — a lunch, a forum, a speech, a reception — Buchananites were invited by the state chapter of Forbes’s national political organization, Americans for Hope, Growth, and Opportunity (AHGO). Dozens showed up, and Forbes courted them gracefully. “I liked what I heard,” Pat Krueger, a state representative and a leader of the Buchanan forces, told Forbes. “I look forward to what your experience will be in New Hampshire.”

Forbes is devoting even more time to Iowa, the state with the first major presidential voting event in 2000. He’s scheduled three trips there this fall. Says state Republican chairman Steve Grubbs: “Of all last time’s presidential candidates, Steve Forbes has come the furthest in establishing credibility. But in some ways he had the furthest to go.”

One thing Forbes says he learned from running in 1996 is “you’re not always in control of events.” This year, events have played into his hands. First, Republican leaders in Congress, traumatized by their fight with President Clinton over the government shutdown, lost their nerve and created a leadership vacuum. Forbes, whose only official GOP title is finance chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has tried to fill it as best an unelected outsider can. Then, Republican chairman Haley Barbour stepped down, leaving Republicans without the ability to respond rapidly to Clinton and the Democrats. Now, Forbes responds by fax, for example zinging Clinton on October 1 for defending the IRS. And he benefited from Texas governor George W. Bush’s poor performance at the cattle show in Indianapolis. Had Bush given a spellbinding speech, the presidential buzz would all be about Bush, his poll numbers, his broad appeal, the inevitability of his being nominated. Instead, the buzz (if not the polls) is mostly about Forbes, and Bush has decided to stay out of national politics for at least a year.

Forbes wants to run in the manner of Ronald Reagan, govern in the style of Teddy Roosevelt. That is the broad scheme at least. On the ground, the idea is to recreate the Reagan coalition, in which conservative activists, not elected officials, constituted the base. Forbes aims to have developed a direct-mail file of 400,000 by late 1999 (AHGO has 60,000 members so far). He plans to run everywhere, including the early presidential skirmishes in Alaska and Louisiana. His goal is to amass $ 35 million before the primaries, proving he can raise money from other people as well as spend his own. If more funds are required, he will venture into his own pocket. Forbes will not accept matching funds and thus won’t be subject to spending limits.

It’s the Reagan of 1976, even more than of 1980, whom Forbes wants to emulate, Reagan the anti-establishment insurgent challenging and savagely criticizing the Washington wing of the party led by President Gerald Ford. Reagan lost the nomination in 1976, but just barely; if he had been running against anyone but an incumbent president, he would have won. Forbes won’t face a Republican president, so in that sense his task is easier. His Washington targets are Newt Gingrich and Lott, though he doesn’t attack them by name. In every speech, often while feigning sorrow, Forbes lambastes them for “caving” to Clinton on the budget deal and offering “pathetic” leadership. “I have to be blunt,” Forbes told a luncheon audience in Durham, N.H. ” Unfortunately, for Republican leaders in Washington, it’s business as usual.”

The Forbes parallels with Reagan are numerous. Reagan was confrontational toward Washington, and so is Forbes. Reagan recruited GOP rebels in Congress like then-first-term senator Jesse Helms, while Forbes is building ties to young Republican dissidents in the House like Paxon, Joe Scarborough, and Steve Largent. Forbes, says Scarborough, “has the best program, the best speech, the best vision.” Forbes has embraced post-1976 Reagan tactics, too. Reagan communicated to the country by newspaper column and radio commentary. Forbes has faxes, radio ads, and his magazine. Reagan set up a national organization, Citizens for the Republic, as his perch. Forbes has AHGO. (His aides pleaded with Forbes for months to choose another name, fearing people would refer to it as AHOG.) Reagan traveled incessantly, speaking at conservative gatherings and on behalf of candidates. Likewise, Forbes.

The most important parallel, however, is thematic. Reagan married economic and social issues in his basic message, appealing to the burgeoning New Right as well as to conventional conservatives. That was not Forbes’s tack in 1996. Instead, he carelessly alienated social conservatives by overemphasizing economic issues and complaining about the Christian Coalition. He’s learned his lesson. Now, his stump speech concentrates as much on the need for “moral rejuvenation” in America as on taxes. “The signs are there” for a moral revival, he told a conservative crowd in Manchester, N.H. “People want to put things right again.”

Forbes has made an enormous effort to fashion a compelling moral stand. He was going to skip the Republican confab in Indianapolis to stay on a family vacation in Maine but changed his mind when his wife and daughters urged him to go. His speech was patched together at the last minute. But for his address to the Christian Coalition, Forbes hired a talented speechwriter, Mike Gerson, who has written often on moral and spiritual matters. Forbes, Gerson, Forbes’s chief aide Bill Dal Col, and others spent weeks on the speech, and it showed. Forbes was able to move seamlessly between economic and moral issues and to refer to “God and His purposes” without sounding self- consciously religious. What is important in a leader, he said, are “unseen things,” such as “a conscious attempt to conform our plans to God’s justice.”

Christian conservatives have become sophisticated detectors of cant. They spot it instantly in politicians who talk to them solely about their issues (abortion, assisted suicide, school prayer, personal morality) and talk about other issues everywhere else. Forbes didn’t do this. He spent a quarter of the speech on taxes and another chunk on the failures of national leadership. Americans want “the challenge of great, virtuous goals,” he said, “what Teddy Roosevelt called the “pursuit of mighty things.” The type of moral leadership that won world wars and cold wars. . . . This is the tradition of Ronald Reagan, who not only fought the waves but changed the tide. That is the tradition of Teddy Roosevelt.”

He may not get the support of the Christian Right, and even if he does, that won’t guarantee the nomination. But religious conservatives do have veto power, and now Forbes won’t be vetoed, if only because of his new stress on curbing abortion. “Remember, life begins at conception and ends at natural death,” he said before the Christian Coalition, repeating a line he first used in a radio interview with New York talkshow host Bob Grant. “Beyond vague commitments, we need specific actions,” Forbes went on. “And we should start by banning partial-birth abortions. . . . I believe it could be the first step in the process of persuasion and legal change that culminates in a society where every child, from the moment of conception, is protected by law and love.” As he left the podium, Forbes was asked by Joseph D’Agostino of Human Events if he would back a constitutional amendment banning abortion except to save the life of the mother. If that reached his desk, Forbes said, he would sign it. (He has his Constitution wrong. When amendments pass Congress, they go to the states, not the president.)

Forbes is still at cross-purposes with the anti-abortion movement, however. In a manifesto to be published in Policy Review entitled “The Moral Basis of a Free Society,” he outlines an incremental approach to halting abortions. Small steps should be taken, like stopping fetal-tissue research and requiring parental consent in the case of minors, until “an overwhelming” national consensus is developed against abortion. “We must recover such a consensus, but we cannot do so simply with the stroke of a legislative pen or a Supreme Court vote,” he writes. “In democracy, we cannot impose; we must persuade.” Forbes and his aides spent months drafting the paper and tinkering with the language.

By minimizing, for now, the importance of legal and legislative efforts to eliminate abortions outright, Forbes takes issue with exactly what pro-lifers have been working on for years. They want legislatures and courts to intervene boldly. When I read the passage about persuading, not imposing, to Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council, he declared: “That’s ludicrous.” Others have complained about Forbes’s insistence on an exception for rape and incest. Colleen Parro, the director of the Republican National Coalition for Life, sniped at this at the Life Forum (where Forbes was otherwise well- received). His face got red, and he responded haltingly that he knew someone who’d been raped, according to Parro. She has concluded from the encounter that Forbes supports regulating abortions, not outlawing them. Afterwards, she wrote Forbes: “If you are at all open to reconsideration of your position, I would be happy to discuss the matter further with you.” Forbes did not respond.

It’s clear Forbes feels awkward discussing abortion. But the reason isn’t that he’s really pro-choice and just faking a pro-life position. The opposite is true: Forbes is more pro-life than he lets on. Ken Tomlinson, the former editor-in-chief of Reader’s Digest and a close friend of Forbes, says: ” In casual conversations over the years, I saw him take the pro-life position consistently. That was just his position, pro-life and anti-abortion.”

My guess is Forbes figures a full-blown pro-life stand is bad politics, especially among the rich Republicans he socializes with. He never calls himself “pro-life.” And when I interviewed him, he wouldn’t say he favors overturning Roe v. Wade. But wouldn’t it be a good thing if Roe fell? He said nothing, but nodded yes. Of course, in a speech last year, he endorsed what reversing Roe v. Wade would produce: each state’s right to decide on the legality of abortion.

What about Teddy Roosevelt? Forbes mentions him in every speech. But it’s TR’s style, not always his substance, that Forbes relishes — the moral fervor, the reformist zeal, the insistence on accomplishing big things. Roosevelt’s era “speaks to us today,” he writes in his manifesto on morality. Like the 1990s, the 1890s were a “troubled time.” Industrial monopolies grew, corrupt big-city political machines flourished, people feared massive immigration. The churches responded and so did TR, says Forbes. “Roosevelt reinforced his battle for political and economic reform by publicly, vigorously, and consistently reasserting the notion that there must be a moral foundation for society [and] that the role of religious faith in society must be affirmed, not undermined.”

Forbes believes some of TR’s policies were wrong, particularly the graduated income tax. Roosevelt’s trust-busting zeal shouldn’t be aimed at corporations now but at “breaking up the government education and entitlement monopolies in favor of individual and parental choice and control.” And “just as Teddy Roosevelt started the new century by attacking government corruption at its source and busting anti-competitive monopolies, it is time to start the next century by shrinking Big Government.” That’s what he would do as president, Forbes says — “junk” the tax code and replace it with “a simple, honest, and fair flat tax.” He would turn Social Security into a mandatory IRA. He would approve school vouchers. He would bar racial quotas and set- asides. He would halt doctor-assisted suicide. He’d step up the fight against illegal drugs.

Is America ready for all this? Forbes argues “three great events” have laid the groundwork for sweeping political, economic, and moral reform: “the end of the Cold War, the dawn of the Information Age, and encouraging signs of another moral and spiritual awakening.” Never in human history has a nation been as powerful and secure as the United States, he says. And the world is watching to see if all goes well here. “We have something that is unique in history,” Forbes said in Manchester. “If America gets it right, the rest of the world will be inspired to get it right.”

More immediately, the question is whether Republicans are ready for Forbes. The comparison with Reagan shouldn’t be overstated. Forbes is not Reagan reincarnate, or even close to it. As a speaker, he has improved, but he lacks Reagan’s easy rapport with a crowd. Still, Forbes is quick on his feet. After a recent Forbes speech, a woman told him he shouldn’t have praised Franklin Roosevelt’s leadership, as FDR was a Democrat. “At least he wouldn’t have signed the Smoot-Hawley tariff,” Forbes shot back. In Durham, N.H., he dazzled an audience by explaining, in answer to a question, how the deficit could rise only $ 70 billion while the national debt soared by twice that. The answer is that borrowing from the Social Security trust fund shrinks the deficit but adds to the debt. Still, he doesn’t have Reagan’s knack for gentle but devastating ripostes. Then again, no other politician does either.

GOP consultant Jeffrey Bell notes Forbes has balked at adopting “a traditional, Reaganite national-security foreign policy on China.” Forbes has criticized China, but he backed continued MFN trade status. Nor does Forbes have a large, devoted following, as Reagan did. Reagan, after all, spent eight years as governor of California and six more running for president. Forbes wasn’t a major player in the GOP until the fall of 1995, when he reluctantly announced for president, and then only because Jack Kemp wouldn’t. This time, he’s not waiting for Kemp to decide. Having run once helps. “In the Republican party, that’s the same as having dated,” says Ralph Reed, the former director of the Christian Coalition. But marriage is a long way off.

The trouble with being the Republican of the moment is the moment often fades. The history of GOP presidential candidates who soared early is not encouraging. Nelson Rockefeller in 1964, George Romney in 1968, George Bush in 1980, Pat Robertson in 1988 — they all looked stronger than they turned out to be. Forbes’s wealth is bound to help, though money didn’t save Rocky. Forbes is already hiring what amounts to a campaign staff, including two conservative publicists, Craig Shirley and Greg Mueller, who worked for Bob Dole and Buchanan, respectively, in 1996. Within weeks, he’ll name a chief fund-raiser. Forbes is all the more noticeable now because, as Bell says, ” he’s the only potential candidate who’s implementing a strategy. No one else has developed a message, a pitch.” It’s a very good one, and in October 1997, that’s enough to entitle a candidate to be taken seriously.

Fred Barnes is exective editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.