On The Right - Steve Forbes's presidential campaign; presidential candidacy of Gov. George W. Bush; need to protect rights of parents in teenage abortion - candidacy of Gov. George W. Bush - Column

The Forbes Bandwagon

NEW YORK, AUGUST 6

Get a load of Steve Forbes's campaign!

The essential data: He wants to serve as president in order to reintroduce life liberty and the pursuit of happiness as the animating ideals of the good old U.S.A. Life (for the underinformed) includes life for the unborn. Liberty means emerging free from the cocoon of laws, mostly federal, that impose on us whether we're in the mood to start a business or rent an apartment or build a house.

The pursuit of happiness is the term the Fathers got around to, interrupting the conventional terminology, which back then ran: life liberty and property. But no one is more keenly aware than Forbes of the interrelationship between property and the pursuit of happiness. If happiness is a sailboat or a convertible, you shouldn't be stopped from getting them by reason of leeches affixed to the body by parasitic aggressors. The cost of government is somewhere over 30 percent of the GDP. That puts off the sailboat or the convertible or the college education or the nights at the opera, and influences human activity, sometimes dominating it. The energy spent in completing tax forms and avoiding tax exposure, bottled up, could make the Sahara Desert flower.

Steve Forbes is a fascinating phenomenon in so many ways. One can't read a paragraph about him in the press without being reminded that he is very wealthy. Routinely, some papers refer to him now as a "billionaire." The Wall Street Journal estimated his wealth at only one- half of that, a lousy $500 million. Then too there are disparaging reports about his expenditure of all that money (his 1996 campaign consumed $37 million of Forbes's own money) on a political campaign. That isn't, surely, the right perspective to put on it? Arianna Huffington, defending the $30 million spent by her former husband on a Senate campaign in California, remarked that no one thought it odd for wealthy citizens to spend $30 million on a Picasso. "My husband was willing to spend that much money to get him to the Senate where he could contribute what he thinks he can contribute to the commonweal."

Well said, and Steve Forbes, who actually outspent George Bush in the first six months of this year, clearly thinks it right to hock a substantial amount of his capital to a campaign that, at least, ventilates his views on life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and at most, would get him sworn in as President of the United States.

Moreover, what Forbes is doing is hugely different from simply turning on the tap and having an army of high-priced publicists stick your face on television every two minutes wangling the attention of voters or potential voters. Steve Forbes is appearing bodily sometimes ten times a day in pursuit of political attention and voter patronage.

According to the Daily Reporter in Spencer, Iowa: "Steve Forbes, one of the Republican candidates for president, made a stop in Spencer Wednesday, drawing more than 100 people to a reception at The Hotel. The turnout forced staffers to set up extra tables and chairs . . ." One hundred was a major turnout! That is in poetic correlation with the $1,000 limit on contributions. Raise one hundred million dollars one thousand at a time, attract fifty million voters one hundred at a time.

But Forbes is doing this in style. At every stop, he hits a different theme (Social Security, IRS, health care, foreign policy, abortion). "Those themes are delivered in daylong strings of grassroots meetings, but that is only on the surface. Forbes is rolling around the state in banner-festooned buses with music blaring from rooftop speakers on the caravan, Victory Express II."

Underneath that roof, high-tech stuff is going on. "At each event, Forbes greets activists and poses for photos with them as aides click away with special digital cameras. Staffers retreat to the back of the bus, where a string of laptop computers and printers whir away as Forbes speaks. When the activists leave, the photos with Forbes are on a table waiting."

Several questions press themselves on fans of Mr. Forbes's message. The first is: How communicable is it? Do those 100 people who hear that speech feel the tingle that translates into voting for Forbes in the Iowa contest on the 14th? Is it the message that catalyzes political action? Or is it the messenger? If Steve Forbes electrifies his listeners with the attraction of his agenda, a very good case is made for sending Victory Express II to Washington, D.C. It would be good to see pictures of Dick Gephardt and Charlie Rangel shaking hands appreciatively with Steve Forbes. The conservative movement makes way for late vocations.

The Texan Dreadnought

NEW YORK, JULY 6

The W. Express is some operation. A distinguished state governor called in last week, a public figure much esteemed at this end of the conservative production line, but not an old acquaintance, let alone a phone chum. He had two things on his mind, the first to pass along joyful news of a tax reduction in his state, the second to comment on the candidacy of Gov. George W. Bush, about which the caller was hugely enthusiastic.