|
|
It's Not Just The TV Commercials, Or The Flat Tax Message. Voters Are Actually Drawn To The Messenger HimselfBy Nancy Gibbs/TIME (Feb. 12) -- For students of irony and pity, the presidential race last week offered its most piercing lessons yet. There was Bob Dole, the Dust Bowl, small-town boy who would still have the use of his right arm if the war had ended three weeks earlier, finding his fate in the pink, uncallused hands of a millionaire preppie publisher who grew up in a house with a name and claims to have honed his survival skills at summer camp. ![[Forbes]](forbes.truck.gif)
After a long year of gritting his teeth and strumming the pro-life, family-values chords that are supposed to win Republican primaries, Dole now has to watch Steve Forbes, a pro-choice libertarian who favors rhythm and blues and Clinton's "don't ask, don't tell" policy toward gays in the military, become the darling of primary voters in the space of four months. The veteran lawmaker proudly cites his 35 years of public service as the most gifted legislative problem solver of his generation, only to be scorched by Forbes ads labeling him a "Washington insider," the guy who calls Gomorrah home. For Dole, it is a painful reprise of 1988, when he was beaten back by George Bush, another patrician playing the populist and making dubious promises about taxes. "Dole spent 35 years on the public payroll and became a multimillionaire," Forbes teases lethally in Iowa. "But I won't use the class-warfare argument against him." A tough, genial and private man, Steve Forbes has surely known his share of sorrow. But it is hard to imagine his enduring as painful a season as Bob Dole now faces in these last cold days before his fate is decided. In every presidential campaign, there comes a moment when the Establishment wakes up one morning, blinks hard and realizes that someone it had barely noticed before is emerging. It happened with the Republicans and Ronald Reagan in 1976, and then with the Democrats and Gary Hart in 1984. Last week it was the Republicans' turn again, as party elders arrived at work all over the country Thursday morning, scanned the papers and nearly spilled their coffee trying to fathom the idea that a man they'd scarcely heard of six months ago might just turn out to be their standard bearer against Bill Clinton. Age of Possibility indeed. But there it was: Steve Forbes, blanketing the airwaves in Arizona, beguiling crowds in Iowa three times the size of Dole's, leading by nine points in a poll of New Hampshire voters. (Take a look at Forbes on the bus.) The survey had its flaws: it was conducted well before Bob Dole had uncaged his more ferocious ads. Some wise elders insisted that Dole would rebound and Forbes would slide; but others said no, the whole race is up for grabs now, Dole may lose New Hampshire and drop out, Phil Gramm may surge, the campaign may crack wide open and go all the way to California (only seven weeks away), or even all the way to the convention. And where was Bob Dole, at the very moment when every minute not spent campaigning was a possibility lost? On the Senate floor, where he is king, where he has scored his biggest triumphs and built his national reputation--and at this particular moment in his life, the last place in the world where he wanted to be. February was supposed to be the month he finally escaped the capital, set aside the budget and breathed the fresh air of Iowa and New Hampshire. But by last week there was still nothing resembling a budget deal, and Democratic leader Tom Daschle, part responsible statesman, part mischief maker, refused to let the Senate adjourn without putting the issue to a vote. A Dole aide, making one last appeal to Daschle's staff, told them, "I have never seen Senator Dole so angry as he is right now." Primary voters in general, and New Hampshire voters in particular, savor the right to reserve judgment, which suggests that Forbes is neither so flush nor Dole so wounded as last week's freeze frame suggests. Dole has 2 1/2 weeks, a political lifetime, to regain the lead in New Hampshire, during which time Forbes will finally face the scrutiny afforded a front runner. Though Forbes has no real political record to help or haunt him, he is sure to have to answer for ideas he has promoted in his magazine, from his support of Gerald Ford over Ronald Reagan for the 1976 nomination and his (now modified) laissez-faire attitude toward illegal immigration to his proposal for a $1.50 gas tax and for repealing the law barring Presidents from appointing close relatives to government positions. (In a 1993 column he urged Bill Clinton to give Hillary a Cabinet position or to name her head of a federal agency.) "We expect the attacks will be personal and vicious," says campaign manager Bill Dal Col. "It's the hazing process of American politics," Forbes adds. "It's a sign of the progress we're making." In the meantime, Lamar Alexander and Pat Buchanan have bumped up against a ceiling at 10%; Phil Gramm will try to hang on through the early races to reach his home turf in the Southern primaries on March 12. He parcels out his money dime by dime, flying around in rattletrap planes, wearing a beige wool coat he bought from a street vendor in Washington in 1979 and until recently sporting shabby shoes and a broken watch. Aides joke that they've thought the Senator would make one of them share a room with him if the local Super 8 gave him a room with double beds. "There are really two wars going on out here," he says in a plane over South Carolina, eating his turkey sandwich. "An air war, television, and a ground war, campaign organization." He has focused on the latter because he had no hope of winning the former. "You never know until the end whether you were right or not." Dole, Gramm and Alexander are still playing by the traditional rules even as Forbes sets out to rewrite them. Until now the confounding charm of early primary races was that for once the candidates had to go full retail, shaking every hand in Iowa, trolling through the north-country diners, meeting real voters face to face who would take their measure in their own sweet time. No one could ever afford to launch a full-scale air war so early; the candidates typically have held a substantial chunk of their limited funds in reserve for broadcast battles in the Super Tuesday states, as well as the big primaries of New York and California. The catch is, of course, that Forbes' funds aren't limited, at least not by the spending rules that Dole and other publicly funded candidates must obey. Behind the scenes, the showdown in New Hampshire is taking a toll on Dole's overall strategy. The majority leader had planned to spend about $1 million on advertising in the state. But Forbes' deep pockets have, according to an official, pushed the Dole media budget in the region to $2.8 million--money that has to come from elsewhere: the South, the Midwest or California. Because Dole is prevented by law from raising more money if he runs out, this is a gamble. Dole is now betting that if he wins New Hampshire, he'll have enough momentum to carry himself through the rest of the calendar. In the meantime Dole can count on help from such special-interest groups as the National Association of Home Builders to attack the Forbes flat-tax plan (and its proposed elimination of mortgage-interest deductions) in direct mail, radio spots and newspaper advertisements. Dole needs to pull out all the stops because a loss in Iowa or New Hampshire could be the beginning of the end. "If Dole can't get through these two hoops of fire," said a senior adviser to the Senator's campaign, "they're dead." Related Stories: |
|
AllPolitics home page |
|
|
Copyright © 1996 AllPolitics
|
|