His Message Is Money, Mainly Protecting His

Let them eat cake. It’s the new populism.

Steve Forbes for president. I love it. Who could be more perfect as the standard bearer of what has become the party of greed than a spoiled child of the rich with the gumption to buy an election in order to destroy the progressive income tax?

Imagine advocating a flat tax that exempts investment income for guys like him but eliminates the home mortgage deduction basic to middle-class survival. It’s a proposal so self-serving as to be laughable, but Forbes has kept a straight face to pull it off, which is perhaps his most remarkable achievement.

That and tens of millions of dollars to convince alienated voters that this son of extreme privilege who grew up dining with presidents, is just one of them. A Washington “outsider,” no less, even though former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was a frequent visitor to the Forbes family yacht and former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger worked for him after leaving office. Former Cabinet secretaries Jack Kemp and William Bennett are helping to guide his campaign, but of course they, too, claim to be “outsiders.”

A “risk taker,” Newt Gingrich calls him, when the only risk Forbes ever endured was the possibility of slipping in the shower while waiting to inherit his father’s fortune. In interviews, Forbes has referred to the character-testing traumas of day camp and prep school, where he developed what he calls his “survival instinct.” This is a fellow who should have no difficulty sharing the uncertainties of a downsized telephone worker.

Nothing wrong with being a super-rich guy running for president, as long as he doesn’t exclusively serve the interests of his class. Perhaps it took a millionaire like FDR to save capitalism during the Depression by returning some of the system’s spoils to the masses. Even Nelson Rockefeller knew you had to give something back and was an enthusiast for public projects to share the wealth. These days, millionaire politicians like Forbes (and Ross Perot) are shameless. What’s good for them is good for the country, end of discussion.

The other Republican candidates similarly believe in the redistribution of income to the well-off. But they are better at masking the purpose of their “revolution” with a dizzying sideshow of arguments about family values, abortion, gays in the military and the balanced budget. Forbes cares little about all that.

This is one guy who had better not blame the loss of “traditional” family values on liberal programs, when his own staunchly Republican father led a quite flamboyant lifestyle.

It is also too late for Forbes to become a believable anti-choice candidate, given his past statements in opposition to a constitutional amendment banning abortion. What fun it will be to watch Pat Robertson and his so-called Christian Coalition squirm if they have to sell the Republican revolution without the bait of the pro-life issue.

It will be difficult to find biblical references in support of supply-side economics, which is what Steve Forbes is all about: putting more money in the hands of the rich and letting the chips fall where they may. Brace yourself for even higher deficits than the unprecedented red ink of the supply-side-driven Reagan era.

It’s so refreshing to have a genuine fat cat politician instead of those windbag nuevo millionaire “populists” like Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan who pretend they share the lot of the common man as if they are used to living on a bus driver’s salary.

Suddenly Buchanan, Phil Gramm and Bob Dole, who have worked so hard on the campaign trail to con ordinary people into schlepping out in the cold of winter to betray their own economic interests over some extraneous social issue, have been swept aside by the pure essence of Republicanism: Big money talks.

The other candidates may carp about Forbes’ negative advertising, but they did not object when those same hired-gun consultants ran Jesse Helms’ race-baiting campaign. Nor do the other Republicans dare challenge Forbes’ main message, which is that he should be president for the simple reason that he’s the richest guy in the race.

Forbes made his money the old fashioned way: He inherited it. As Dole said, “What else is this fellow except a bag of money?” Dole can grumble all he wants, but isn’t that what he believes: that the rich should set the agenda, and if so, who better than Forbes?

Steve Forbes, populist for president. Yeah, and Madonna is the Virgin Mary.

Robert Scheer is a Times contributing editor. He can be reached via e-mail at <76327.1675@compuserve.com>.