How Steve Forbes Can Win Big
FRUM, DAVID
How Steve Forbes Can Win Big First he needs to lower his sights and run for the open Senate seat in New Jersey. BY DAVID FRUM IF HE'S NOMINATED next summer, George W. Bush will be the first...
...That man is Steve Forbes...
...Over the past three years, Forbes has done an impressive job of winning the trust of economic and social conservatives alike...
...But Buchanan is drifting ever further away from anything that might be called "conser-' vatism" and toward an alliance with black Marxist Lenora Fulani and other fringe elements concerned about the undue influence of cosmopolitan international bankers upon American political life...
...Even so, Cuomo took only 53 percent of the vote...
...That does not mean that Bush will necessarily govern in an unconservative manner or that he'll be an unsuccessful president...
...If he goes on to win, he'll be the first elected Republican president since Eisenhower not obligated to the right...
...Where would Kemp be today if he had accomplished a stunning upset of liberalism's paladin nine years ago...
...But by now it should be clear that 2000 is no 1940, and that Forbes is extremely unlikely to scoop the nomination from George W. Bush...
...Steve Forbes has gone as far as he can go as a self-financed citizen-candidate...
...Phil Gramm, staunch on the issues as he is, never won a national constituency...
...Jack Kemp once expected the job to plop into his lap, but even he seems now to recognize that his spectacular self-immolation in 1996 put an end to his political career...
...There is no shortage of conservative writers and commentators...
...On the contrary, it's an unwillingness to run for anything other than the big prize that kills a would-be president's prospects...
...Two weeks ago, however, the New Yo-rk Post proposed a better outcome to Forbes's career dilemma...
...Since World War II, there have been only four national conservative leaders: Taft, Goldwater, Reagan, and Gingrich...
...Election-winning is not always a prerequisite for gaining the presidency...
...Which in turn means that if Bush should win the presidency, conservatives will need a champion of their own: somebody who can support the White House when it does the right thing (as Senator Robert Taft staunchly supported President Eisenhower's Korean peacemaking) and effectively oppose it when it does wrong (as Newt Gingrich opposed Bush the David Frum is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and the author of a forthcoming history of life in the 1970s, How We Got Here (Basic...
...There's one man, however, who could fill the position, if he makes the right choice now...
...With New Jersey governor Christine Whitman's decision not to run for the Senate seat vacated by Democrat Frank Lautenberg, there is no strong Republican candidate for the very winnable senatorship in Forbes's home state...
...He'd have the clout to keep the Bush administration on course, and his office would quickly become the national headquarters for disaffected Republicans should the administration drift off...
...So who does that leave...
...The Republican party has nominated political virgins four times this century—William Howard Taft in 1908, Herbert Hoover in 1928, Wendell Willkie in 1940, and Dwight Eisenhower in 1952—and won three times...
...When Mario Cuomo sought a third term in 1990, New York Republicans begged Jack Kemp to oppose him...
...That means avoiding a presidential race he is sure to lose, and entering a race that he can win and that will make him a national force in the event that he does win...
...What if Forbes were to declare for it...
...It does, however, mean that his conservatism will be fitful and calculated—least to be counted on when it is most needed...
...He'd retain the option of mounting a more-credible-than-ever run for president in 2004, if Bush loses or his administration flops, or as a reelected senator in 2008, when he'd still be only 61...
...Pat Buchanan aspired to the job in 1992, and his impressive performance in that year's New Hampshire primary temporarily qualified him for it...
...As a senator, Forbes would command more attention and respect than he would as a twice-defeated candidate for president...
...There's no disgrace in testing the water and drawing back if it's too cold...
...He'd make an admirable national spokesman for conservatism except for one crucial detail: He has never proven he can win an election...
...In 1999, for the first time since the half-decade from the death of Taft to the emergence of Barry Goldwater, no such champion exists...
...If he wants to claim the leader's chair, he's going to have to do the leader's work...
...Those, as it happens, are also the virtues Americans are entitled to expect from a president...
...With New Jersey Democrats facing a potentially bloody primary between Jon Corzine, a liberal zillionaire financier, and Jim Florio, a defeated former governor, Forbes's chances would be excellent...
...Dan Quayle...
...BY DAVID FRUM IF HE'S NOMINATED next summer, George W. Bush will be the first Republican presidential candidate since Jerry Ford in 1976 to owe nothing to the conservative wing of the Republican party...
...Gary Bauer...
...Elder's tax-hiking budget deal in 1990...
...All four were practicing politicians and owed their leadership in some significant part to their political success...
...Has Forbes got them...
...Amazingly enough, there is no such person...
...He holds principled views and expresses them in a principled way...
...Reagan weighed and rejected a presidential run in 1968, and it didn't seem to do his career any harm...
...But an ideological conservative who has submitted himself or herself to the test of the ballot box— and won...
...Kemp hesitated, and the nomination was instead scooped up by the eccentric economist Pierre Rinfret...
...Of course, to make such a decision requires a rare set of qualities: astuteness, realism, boldness, self-discipline, and wisdom...
Vol. 5 • September 1999 • No. 2
