The Forbes Factor
BARNES, FRED
The Forbes Factor By Fred Barnes This is Steve Forbes's moment: He's propelled himself into the top tier of potential Republican presidential candidates in 2000. "No doubt about it," says GOP...
...He is connecting with audiences as well...
...Forbes believes some of TR's policies were wrong, particularly the graduated income tax...
...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...
...And his denunciations of the budget deal ("an abomination," "a monstrosity") have touched a chord with Fred Barnes is executive editor o/The Weekly Standard...
...Still, he doesn't have Reagan's knack for gentle but devastating ripostes...
...He may not even have a good shot at the nomination...
...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...
...If more funds are required, he will venture into his own pocket...
...He'd step up the fight against illegal drugs...
...What is important in a leader, he said, are "unseen things," such as "a conscious attempt to conform our plans to God's justice...
...Forbes is not the frontrunner for 2000...
...People want to put things right again...
...No Republican is quicker off the mark these days than Forbes...
...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...
...But marriage is a long way off...
...Reagan traveled incessantly, speaking at conservative gatherings and on behalf of candidates...
...And when I interviewed him, he wouldn't say he favors overturning Roe v. Wade...
...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...
...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...
...At least he wouldn't have signed the Smoot-Hawley tariff," Forbes shot back...
...He spent a quarter of the speech on taxes and another chunk on the failures of national leadership...
...Reagan married economic and social issues in his basic message, appealing to the burgeoning New Right as well as to conventional conservatives...
...Forbes won't face a Republican president, so in that sense his task is easier...
...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 aims to have developed a direct-mail file of 400,000 by late 1999 (AHGO has 60,000 members so far...
...Forbes is not Reagan reincarnate, or even close to it...
...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...
...All agreed it was a good idea and asked for more information—except Forbes...
...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...
...Forbes will not accept matching funds and thus won't be subject to spending limits...
...He would bar racial quotas and set-asides...
...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...
...Forbes mentions him in every speech...
...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 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...
...No one else has developed a message, a pitch...
...That was not Forbes's tack in 1996...
...After a recent Forbes speech, a woman told him he shouldn't have praised Franklin Roosevelt's leadership, as FDR was a Democrat...
...Forbes has embraced post-1976 Reagan tactics, too...
...On September 25, he spent the day in New Hampshire, where Patrick Buchanan won the primary in 1996...
...He never calls himself "pro-life...
...They want legislatures and courts to intervene boldly...
...we must persuade...
...And we should start by banning partial-birth abortions...
...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...
...He's spoken so often at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in 1997 that he is practically a faculty member...
...Forbes, Gerson, Forbes's chief aide Bill Dal Col, and others spent weeks on the speech, and it showed...
...He's learned his lesson...
...First, Republican leaders in Congress, traumatized by their fight with President Clinton over the government shutdown, lost their nerve and created a leadership vacuum...
...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...
...I liked what I heard," Pat Krueger, a state representative and a leader of the Buchanan forces, told Forbes...
...And the world is watching to see if all goes well here...
...This year, events have played into his hands...
...Forbes's wealth is bound to help, though money didn't save Rocky...
...The history of GOP presidential candidates who soared early is not encouraging...
...Forbes, says Scarborough, "has the best program, the best speech, the best vision...
...His Washington targets are Newt Gingrich and Lott, though he doesn't attack them by name...
...Writing his "Fact and Comment" column hasn't put a crimp in his travel...
...He's willing to go to small markets and spend time," says Rusty Paul, the party's state chairman in Georgia...
...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...
...In September, Bill Paxon introduced a bill to jettison the IRS and tax code on December 31, 2000...
...Having run once helps...
...My guess is Forbes figures a full-blown pro-life stand is bad politics, especially among the rich Republicans he socializes with...
...Instead, he carelessly alienated social conservatives by overemphasizing economic issues and complaining about the Christian Coalition...
...Any presidential candidate will come to Atlanta, Paul says, but Forbes agreed to speak in Albany, Brunswick, and Sea Island...
...Now, his stump speech concentrates as much on the need for "moral rejuvenation" in America as on taxes...
...Says state Republican chairman Steve Grubbs: "Of all last time's presidential candidates, Steve Forbes has come the furthest in establishing credibility...
...Reagan was confrontational toward Washington, and so is Forbes...
...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...
...The signs are there" for a moral revival, he told a conservative crowd in Manchester, N.H...
...The answer is that borrowing from the Social Security trust fund shrinks the deficit but adds to the debt...
...One thing Forbes says he learned from running in 1996 is "you're not always in control of events...
...Forbes has AHGO...
...I get so many faxes from him, I can't read them all," grumbles Alec Poitevint, the Republican National Committee's treasurer...
...He sees an opportunity, seizes it, and moves quickly...
...That is the tradition of Teddy Roosevelt...
...Industrial monopolies grew, corrupt big-city political machines flourished, people feared massive immigration...
...This time, he's not waiting for Kemp to decide...
...He was, as Ron Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times put it recently, "the man with the goofy grin and the serious bank account...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...His speech was patched together at the last minute...
...Forbes has faxes, radio ads, and his magazine...
...No doubt about it," says GOP representative Bill Paxon of New York, a fresh Forbes admirer...
...GOP consultant Jeffrey Bell notes Forbes has balked at adopting "a traditional, Reaganite national-security foreign policy on China...
...The most important parallel, however, is thematic...
...What about Teddy Roosevelt...
...Forbes made a bad impression with his one-issue, slash-and-burn presidential candidacy in the 1996 Republican primaries...
...But wouldn't it be a good thing if Roe fell...
...The trouble with being the Republican of the moment is the moment often fades...
...They have responded warmly...
...When he spelled out his opposition to abortion, "they ate it up," says Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation...
...And he benefited from Texas governor George W. Bush's poor performance at the cattle show in Indianapolis...
...Forbes has given Christian conservatives two things they crave: time and respect...
...Today, Forbes has by far the strongest conservative message of any leading Republican...
...Forbes did not respond...
...Then, Republican chairman Haley Barbour stepped down, leaving Republicans without the ability to respond rapidly to Clinton and the Democrats...
...the multitude of GOP conservatives disenchanted with Republican leaders in Congress...
...More immediately, the question is whether Republicans are ready for Forbes...
...Forbes is still at cross-purposes with the anti-abortion movement, however...
...But the reason isn't that he's really pro-choice and just faking a pro-life position...
...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...
...It's a very good one, and in October 1997, that's enough to entitle a candidate to be taken seriously...
...He said nothing, but nodded yes...
...Forbes didn't do this...
...Paxon called a half-dozen Republican presidential types for their help in pushing it...
...His goal is to amass $35 million before the primaries, proving he can raise money from other people as well as spend his own...
...He would halt doctor-assisted suicide...
...Unfortunately, for Republican leaders in Washington, it's business as usual...
...In democracy, we cannot impose...
...Is America ready for all this...
...It's clear Forbes feels awkward discussing abortion...
...He had lunch with Ralph Reed, who was favorably impressed, and with James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who wasn't...
...if he had been running against anyone but an incumbent president, he would have won...
...In every speech, often while feigning sorrow, Forbes lambastes them for "caving" to Clinton on the budget deal and offering "pathetic" leadership...
...She has concluded from the encounter that Forbes supports regulating abortions, not outlawing them...
...Reagan communicated to the country by newspaper column and radio commentary...
...Forbes wants to run in the manner of Ronald Reagan, govern in the style of Teddy Roosevelt...
...And three weeks earlier, when presidential hopefuls spoke before a GOP gathering in Indianapolis, Forbes was a star...
...He would turn Social Security into a mandatory IRA...
...On the ground, the idea is to recreate the Reagan coalition, in which conservative activists, not elected officials, constituted the base...
...He's scheduled three trips there this fall...
...But in some ways he had the furthest to go...
...When I read the passage about persuading, not imposing, to Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council, he declared: "That's ludicrous...
...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...
...Dozens showed up, and Forbes courted them gracefully...
...But religious conservatives do have veto power, and now Forbes won't be vetoed, if only because of his new stress on curbing abortion...
...This is the tradition of Ronald Reagan, who not only fought the waves but changed the tide...
...I have to be blunt," Forbes told a luncheon audience in Durham, N.H...
...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...
...The churches responded and so did TR, says Forbes...
...Roosevelt's era "speaks to us today," he writes in his manifesto on morality...
...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...
...He may not get the support of the Christian Right, and even if he does, that won't guarantee the nomination...
...Reagan set up a national organization, Citizens for the Republic, as his perch...
...Also, he has installed himself as an influential Republican agenda-setter, dispatching his ideas and proposals and statements and rapid responses by fax to nearly 10,000 GOP leaders, conservatives, and policy entrepreneurs...
...Not only that, Forbes has adroitly embraced a new role as reliable party activist and fund-raiser even as he retains his reputation as political outsider...
...Never in human history has a nation been as powerful and secure as the United States, he says...
...Reagan lost the nomination in 1976, but just barely...
...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...
...He would approve school vouchers...
...Then again, no other politician does either...
...He plans to run everywhere, including the early presidential skirmishes in Alaska and Louisiana...
...Forbes has made an enormous effort to fashion a compelling moral stand...
...Forbes was able to move seamlessly between economic and moral issues and to refer to "God and His purposes" without sounding self-consciously religious...
...A few days later, Forbes joined Paxon at a press conference on Capitol Hill...
...He has his Constitution wrong...
...Colleen Par-ro, the director of the Republican National Coalition for Life, sniped at this at the Life Forum (where Forbes was otherwise well-received...
...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...
...When amendments pass Congress, they go to the states, not the president...
...Within 24 hours, he had a game plan to help me promote it," says Paxon...
...He gave the most effective speech this year by any Republican when he addressed the Christian Coalition in Atlanta on September 13...
...We have something that is unique in history," Forbes said in Manchester...
...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...
...Like the 1990s, the 1890s were a "troubled time...
...If America gets it right, the rest of the world will be inspired to get it right...
...Within weeks, he'll name a chief fund-raiser...
...Since he talked obsessively about a 17 percent flat tax, he appealed chiefly to a narrow sliver of voters, mostly supply-siders and libertarians...
...Forbes is all the more noticeable now because, as Bell says, "he's the only potential candidate who's implementing a strategy...
...That is the broad scheme at least...
...Likewise, Forbes...
...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...
...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 talk-show host Bob Grant...
...The Forbes parallels with Reagan are numerous...
...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...
...Others have complained about Forbes's insistence on an exception for rape and incest...
...I look forward to what your experience will be in New Hampshire...
...Forbes and his aides spent months drafting the paper and tinkering with the language...
...Beyond vague commitments, we need specific actions," Forbes went 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...
...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...
...Forbes has criticized China, but he backed continued MFN trade status...
...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...
...The opposite is true: Forbes is more pro-life than he lets on...
...Nor does Forbes have a large, devoted following, as Reagan did...
...But he does have a real chance, and that wasn't true before his surge over the past six months...
...Forbes is devoting even more time to Iowa, the state with the first major presidential voting event in 2000...
...Still, Forbes is quick on his feet...
...That was just his position, pro-life and anti-abortion...
...As a speaker, he has improved, but he lacks Reagan's easy rapport with a crowd...
...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...
...The comparison with Reagan shouldn't be overstated...
...Christian conservatives have become sophisticated detectors of cant...
...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...
...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...
...If that reached his desk, Forbes said, he would sign it...
...His face got red, and he responded haltingly that he knew someone who'd been raped, according to Parro...
...In the Republican party, that's the same as having dated," says Ralph Reed, the former director of the Christian Coalition...
...As for Republican regulars, they like Forbes's availability...
...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...
...His aides pleaded with Forbes for months to choose another name, fearing people would refer to it as A-HOG...
...Reagan, after all, spent eight years as governor of California and six more running for president...
...Now, Forbes responds by fax, for example zinging Clinton on October 1 for defending the IRS...
...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 met with Life Forum, a group of anti-abortion leaders, for two private grillings last April...
...Weyrich is committed to Sen...
...John Ashcroft of Missouri in 2000...
Vol. 3 • October 1997 • No. 5
