THE AGONY OF NOT BEING GEORGE W. BUSH
Carlson, Tucker
THE AGONY OF NOT BEING GEORGE W. BUSH Life Among the Also-Rans By Tucker Carlson Des Moines, Iowa Drive around Des Moines long enough and you begin to see the connection between a candidate's...
...One thing you won't see driving around Des Moines is George W. Bush's Iowa campaign office...
...Tobin is the national political director of Forbes 2000...
...Everyone's at lunch," says the lone staffer manning the phone...
...We're telling voters, 'ride their bus, eat their steak, then vote for us.' That's the official straw poll motto of Quayle 2000...
...The Keyes 2000 Des Moines office promptly released a statement heralding the triumph...
...Gobel claims she isn't angry with Steve Forbes, only saddened by his decision to take "the Clinton path...
...Last week, Lamar Alexander sent out a press release boasting that his "traveling campaign got a boost in spirits when Joe Klein, political reporter for the New Yorker and author of Primary Colors, joined the tour for a couple of stops...
...The answer was, probably not...
...Late last month, the head of the state chapter of the Christian Coalition, Bobbie Gobel, came forward to claim that a Forbes operative had approached her about buying votes in the Iowa straw poll...
...But will it buy anything in the end for Forbes...
...It is also, all of a sudden, on the defensive...
...Bauer includes details of his father's alcoholism, his parents' marriage, even the demise of his uncle, an employee of an "organized crime syndicate" who was "machine-gunned to death" by mobsters...
...But at least it's not slick...
...He could come in last and still be handing out gold lapel pins in New Hampshire...
...It ought to be quite a party...
...Elizabeth Dole's office, meanwhile, is spread out across the showroom floor of a defunct foreign car dealership...
...And everyone who happens to be in the area when Forbes arrives gets a complimentary photograph taken with the candidate, developed and returned within an hour...
...She's embarrassing herself...
...We're not going to fall for that...
...Not Keyes...
...It can be frustrating.Not long ago, David Kochel, the Iowa campaign manager for the Lamar Alexander campaign, saw Dan Quayle sitting at a table in a steakhouse in Des Moines...
...No matter who takes the silver or the bronze at Ames, however, there is still no question about who will emerge with the gold...
...So does the Forbes for President office, which shares a building with the American College of Hair Styling...
...Bush is so far ahead in the polls that many of his opponents consider him, for now anyway, irrelevant...
...George W. Bush will still be in the lead when it's all over...
...The release didn't mention the story Klein returned to New York and wrote, which described Lamar as a pathetic loser who is "probably irrelevant" to the presidential race...
...The minimum job is four hours.'" Gobel says she thought about Keen's offer, discussed it at a Christian Coalition staff meeting (where it was entered into the minutes), and decided to decline...
...In February, Gobel says, a Forbes organizer named Jerry Keen called her office at Metro Temp, a temporary employment agency she owns in Des Moines, and offered to hire 500 temporary workers on the day of the straw poll...
...He said they only wanted to pay for two hours," Gobel says...
...Inside Keyes HQ in Des Moines one afternoon in late July, Ron Granzow, the campaign's Iowa chairman, is sitting at what may be the most cluttered desk in the state...
...Keen, Gobel says, wanted to bus the workers to Ames with the understanding they would vote for Forbes...
...It's clear Keyes wrote every word himself...
...Surrounded by piles of paper, a Bible, a toothbrush, containers of food, and hundreds of other objects, Granzow cheerfully explains the Keyes strategy for the Ames straw poll...
...In a pamphlet entitled "Testimony," Bauer tells the story of his poverty-stricken childhood—the whole story...
...Their children will get free face painting...
...Within days, under pressure from the Forbes campaign, the national office of the Christian Coalition fired her...
...He needs to find Jesus...
...The other campaigns watched Gobelgate with glee...
...But Bush's lead has changed a lot of circumstances in Iowa this summer...
...Our people in Iowa believe what she said about Forbes," says Dole spokesman Ari Fleischer...
...It makes for a compelling read, if not for a compelling reason to vote for Bauer...
...The rest will have to go home and find law firm sinecures...
...But I said, 'We can't find 500 people to work two hours...
...The front door is decorated with at least three No Smoking stickers...
...It hurts him, because he's lost and he's wandering out there in the wilderness...
...Everyone who comes to see Forbes speak at a stop along his multi-week, 77-county bus tour through Iowa, Tobin says, gets free food...
...We couldn't give tickets away if we wanted to...
...Not so some of his other campaign material, which is obviously staff-produced...
...Somehow that makes sense...
...If it's compelling reasons you're looking for, look no further than Alan Keyes...
...The Quayle 2000 headquarters, for instance, is virtually invisible from the street and almost entirely deserted at one o'clock in the afternoon on a weekday...
...It's enough to make a second-string presidential candidate a little desperate...
...No one doubts Bush will win the August 14 straw poll in Ames...
...As Kochel puts it, at this point "we're all kind of in the same boat...
...That's because it's not in Des Moines, but in Clive, an upscale suburb west of town...
...We're asking people to sacrifice...
...Back at the American College of Hair Styling, Jim Tobin is talking about what it's like to work for a very different kind of campaign, the kind that can afford to do just about anything it wants...
...Inside, in place of the usual heartwarming photos of the candidate with supporters, is an essay thousands of words long explaining why Americans have devolved from "a free and vigilant people" to "tax serfs...
...The Straw Poll victories," announced his campaign manager, "dispel any doubts that Alan Keyes is a viable candidate and that he has little chance to win the nomination...
...We're asking people to buy their own tickets...
...They didn't want to pay for the two hour bus ride...
...The former vice president, Kochel says, was visibly agitated...
...A soft-spoken Mainer, Tobin doesn't seem like the bragging type, but there is nothing modest about his description of how Forbes has been wooing potential straw poll voters...
...From the office of any other Republican candidate, it takes a long time to get to where Bush is...
...Or of the Keyes and Buchanan campaign HQs, both of which sit directly across the street from a porn shop...
...The other candidates, says Granzow, a Korean War vet and former ad salesman, are buying the $25 tickets to the poll and giving them to supporters...
...Frankly," he says, smiling in a slightly embarrassed kind of way, "we don't have the money to do anything else...
...Can you do anything to stop it?'" Kochel didn't answer Quayle directly...
...Bobbie Gobel or not, Forbes is still expected to run second, if only because he has spent so much money— reportedly over $2 million—to do it...
...The incident never happened," says Bill Dal Col, Forbes's campaign manager...
...I want Forbes and his campaign workers to know I have no hostile feelings for their sin...
...In June, Keyes won two minor Iowa county straw polls...
...Gary Bauer, by contrast, has decided to leave nothing out of his campaign literature...
...A headline on the latest Keyes pamphlet warns readers that "your support for Alan Keyes is critical to the destiny of America...
...Not that the other candidates are spending much time figuring out how to get there...
...The Forbes campaign in Iowa is, like its candidate, disciplined, relentless, and rich...
...He can do 100 photos in 11 minutes," Tobin says...
...Not in the most obvious way...
...He said, 'Can you guys do anything to stop this?' I said, 'You mean Bush?' And he said, 'Yes...
...Gobel's claim stayed on the front page of the Des Moines Register for almost a week...
...They have to repent...
...There's room for three, maybe four other serious contenders...
...The question is, Who else will leave Ames with a plausible presidential Tucker Carlson is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Unlike most of the other candidates, Forbes could afford to stay in the race regardless of his performance at Ames...
...You can see it in the campaign literature, which just about everybody but Bush has begun to produce in bales...
...That's the strategy, says Quayle spokesman Jonathan Baron...
...THE AGONY OF NOT BEING GEORGE W. BUSH Life Among the Also-Rans By Tucker Carlson Des Moines, Iowa Drive around Des Moines long enough and you begin to see the connection between a candidate's headquarters and the campaign he's running...
...And the Lamar Alexander office, its window only partly filled with faded campaign signs, many held up with duct tape, that look suspiciously like leftovers from the 1996 race...
...GOBEL CLAIMS SHE ISN'T ANGRY AT FORBES, ONLY SADDENED BY HIS DECISION TO TAKE WHAT SHE CALLS "THE CLINTON PATH...
...The Forbes campaign immediately and repeatedly denounced her as a liar...
...AN AIDE EXPLAINS THE KEYES STRATEGY: OTHER CANDIDATES ARE BUYING THE $25 TICKETS FOR SUPPORTERS.NOT KEYES...
...When he calls me a liar," she says, "it doesn't hurt me...
...On the other hand, Forbes's spending could prompt some of his poorer Republican rivals to waste much-needed cash on the straw poll, thereby forcing some of them out before the real voting begins next year...
...BUSH IS SO FAR AHEAD IN THE POLLS THAT MANY OF HIS OPPONENTS CONSIDER HIM, FOR THE MOMENT ANYWAY, IRRELEVANT...
...He was very exasperated, like throwing up his hands...
...So Kochel stopped by Quayle's table to say hello...
...A grin every 6.6 seconds...
...Bobbie Gobel may be very religious and very conservative, says Fleischer, but she's credible...
...Whatever she says about abortion or dying on the cross, she's not a liar...
...The typeface is tiny, and many of the ideas straddle the line between brilliance and eccentricity...
...campaign...
...Somewhere else in the office a baby begins to cry...
...And, true to his candidate's flinty instincts, he didn't want to spend a dollar more than necessary...
...Alexander and Quayle are, of course, rivals and, under ordinary circumstances, it would have been uncomfortable for Kochel to approach Quayle...
...And what to make of Gary Bauer's headquarters, which is located in a converted urologist's office...
...Everyone who convinces five other people to come gets a gold lapel pin and a T-shirt...
...Granzow takes off his glasses, which are held together with a paper clip...
...On the day of the poll, Forbes supporters will be taken to Ames free of charge in air-conditioned buses, given free tickets to vote, fed free dinner, taken on a free balloon ride, and entertained by Ronnie Milsap and Debbie Boone at a free concert...
...Chalk it up to a typographical error, but the Keyes people seem almost honest enough to say something like this on purpose...
...Off the record, other members of Forbes's staff describe Gobel as a nut case, a victim of multiple personality disorder...
Vol. 4 • August 1999 • No. 45
