CAMPAIGN ’96 : Forbes’ Campaign Alters Message, Man

For a while there, Steve Forbes looked like the kind of guy seasoned candidates would trample. His goofy grin had “chump” written all over it.

No wonder, people figured, that when his first flash of high-polling glory faded in February, he got a little pouty.

But soon after his thumping in last month’s Iowa caucuses, a change came over Forbes. A touch of pride slipped into his voice as he spoke of the “hazing” he had endured at the hands of his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination and the national media.

Although Forbes repeatedly has said he’s in the GOP race “for the duration,” many pundits say today’s New York primary will likely decide whether he continues as a serious contender. But regardless of what happens here, the publishing magnate’s quirky run for the nation’s highest office altered the debate that has marked the Republican presidential campaign--and has changed Steve Forbes.

These days, when the self-proclaimed “outsider” jokes with audiences about enduring a hot-air-spewing “politico,” he’s poking fun at himself. As he pushes ahead with a campaign that has dipped and soared like a bad plane ride, Forbes seems tickled to be one of the boys.

Though still not the smoothest of campaigners, there’s no question he has significantly improved his presence on the stump. And his unrelenting focus on the flat tax--a mission that led to the belated embrace of his candidacy Wednesday by one of the plan’s foremost advocates, former Bush Cabinet member Jack Kemp--undoubtedly has given the issue its highest public profile.

What remains unclear is whether that has helped or hurt the flat-tax cause.

In forcefully pushing the issue of tax reform onto the primary agenda, Forbes may ultimately undercut his party’s prospects for using it effectively against President Clinton, independent political analyst Stuart Rothenberg says.

“Forbes may have rushed the issue too quickly,” says Rothenberg. Republican congressional leaders, Rothenberg notes, intended to spotlight the issue, and “they could have milked tax reform a lot longer.” But Forbes’ plan was so specific and proved so controversial, he says, “it may dilute the tax reform message.”

Already, Republican front-runner Bob Dole has veered away from the flat-tax principle, advocating continuation of a number of deductions.

As for Forbes’ potential future as a GOP leader, Rothenberg can only wrinkle his brow.

“If you ask me about [Patrick J.] Buchanan, I have an answer. If you ask me about Forbes’ long-term impact on the party, I would have to say it’s more questionable.”

Rothenberg adds: “A Cabinet position? I could see that. He’s obviously bright, obviously interested in policy and new ideas and, if he chooses to be involved in public life, I assume there are many leaders who would look to his intelligence. His weakness is what I have termed candidate skills: people skills.”

Few would dispute that. But many who have watched Forbes, including campaign staffers paid to do just that, say they have seen an evolution.

Former New Hampshire Sen. Gordon J. Humphrey, Forbes’ campaign co-chairman, says that Forbes hit bottom in New Hampshire when he finished fourth in its Feb. 20 primary.

“He was feeling lousy,” Humphrey says. But then the man widely regarded as a pampered preppie noticed something: He had survived.

His initial skirmishes with the political big boys was a rite of passage for Forbes, Humphrey says. “It showed he can take a punch.”

Jon Kraushar, a debate coach and “idea guy” who has been at the candidate’s side often since the New Hampshire primary, says the experience ignited Forbes’ “fire in the belly.”

“What people see in Steve is someone who is almost shy, almost has a vulnerability,” says Kraushar. “There’s a sweetness about him. So they underestimate his resolve. . . . He’s a tough competitor.”

And he’s becoming a better candidate. “He’s very quickly moving up the performance curve,” says Kraushar.

“People had an image of him as robotic, mechanical, a guy who was very good about staying on message” but who lost listeners, and presumably votes, because of his delivery, Kraushar adds.

But slowly, Kraushar says, Forbes “has learned that it’s not sufficient to have ideas. You have to sell them.”

He’s also learning to sell himself, to bring out the less cerebral, family-man side, says Grace-Marie Arnett, who joined the campaign last month to “polish and sculpt” Forbes’ message.

As his confidence on the trail has grown, Forbes has strayed from the Rotary Club circuit that was a mainstay of his early campaigning and is now working more “meet and greets” into his schedule. And as many members of his family as he can muster often accompany him.

When Forbes toured a Bangor, Maine, paper mill last week, his daughters Catherine, 19, and Moira, 16, stepped past the gurgling vats of pulp and beeping forklifts to shake hands with flannel- and denim-clad employees. His two daughters handle these chores with poise, and they help frame Forbes as quite the cuddly dad.

Similarly, the workers at a high-tech company in Delaware were clearly charmed by Forbes himself, who listened wide-eyed as they described their micro-fine polishing equipment. He occasionally interjected a “Wow!” or a “That’s wonderful,” while wiggling his fingers excitedly at his side.

At the University of Rochester, he got a crowd of about 500 students downright worked up with some of his standard lines. They cheered and whooped when he said he will take the evil tax code and “scrap it, kill it, drive a stake through its heart, bury it and hope it never rises again to terrorize the American people.”

But he remains wildly uneven. Audiences sometimes sit looking puzzled as he buries the code before killing it, and only then drives the stake through its heart. And he continually muffs another line, saying that he will change the initials of the Internal Revenue Service to “ISR” or “SRI,” when he means RIP: “Rest in peace.”

“It has been said that I am charismatically challenged,” Forbes acknowledges.

For now, he won’t answer questions about his prospects, insisting he plans to keep fighting until the August convention in San Diego. So the question of Forbes’ political future falls one night on a bleary-eyed Bill Dal Col, who manages his campaign.

Asked if Forbes has politics in his blood now, if he’s likely to run for office again--for governor or senator, perhaps--Dal Col nods.

“I think he’ll be back again,” Dal Col says. “You don’t play at this level, participate at this level, unless you plan on doing it again.”