GOP Forum Is Another Missing-Man Formation

Hoping to capitalize on the absence of front-running Texas Gov. George W. Bush, five contenders for the Republican presidential nomination angled energetically Thursday night to cast the longest shadow in a generally civil and mild town hall-style forum.

The GOP candidates largely ignored Bush during their one previous gathering last week, where he was also absent. But this time multimillionaire publisher Steve Forbes waded into the issue of his absence--and took a direct swipe at Bush’s $56-million campaign chest.

“Like you, I share the frustration that Gov. Bush is not here tonight,” Forbes said. “He didn’t come to a debate last week because he had a fund-raiser. A couple of weeks ago, his plane got delayed. He had a choice between a fund-raiser and going to a school in Rhode Island with underprivileged kids; he chose the fund-raiser.

“So perhaps in the future at a forum like this, if we call it a fund-raiser, he might show up.”

Unlike last Friday’s meeting of the GOP candidates, which Bush missed to attend a Vermont fund-raiser, the Texas governor attempted to interject his presence Thursday by appearing on a live television broadcast in New Hampshire shortly before the forum. Bush said his absence demonstrated a commitment to his family, since, instead of the debate, he was with his wife as she received an alumni award from Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

“My family’s important to me, and I hope the people of New Hampshire understand that,” Bush said, with a bemused smile, in a brief interview with the event’s co-sponsor, WMUR-TV. “It seems like the people of New Hampshire accept my vision and want me to be the nominee, but I know I’ve got a lot of work to do. I take nothing for granted, and I think the people of New Hampshire know that.”

In recent weeks, Bush’s 35-point lead in New Hampshire over Sen. John McCain of Arizona, his closest rival, has shrunk to a 12-point advantage. Even Forbes, who has campaigned vigorously in New Hampshire, saw his support increase to 11% in a Boston Herald poll released Oct. 27.

In general, the Republican candidates focused on restoring a climate of morality and virtue and offered far fewer government prescriptions to solve societal ills than the Democratic contenders--Vice President Al Gore and former Sen. Bill Bradley--did in their first onstage encounter at the same location the night before.

The GOP candidates took a total of 20 questions from a randomly selected audience of 300 voters seated in the auditorium at Dartmouth College. In addition to Forbes and McCain, the candidates included former Reagan administration official Gary Bauer, former ambassador Alan Keyes and Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah).

There were few direct exchanges between the candidates, partly due to the format in which questions were directed at a single candidate only. The one exception came when moderator Judy Woodruff, an anchor for co-sponsor CNN, asked each of the candidates to state their positions on a flat tax.

None of the candidates expressed opposition to a flat tax, although Keyes questioned whether any income tax was constitutional. Forbes took credit for the consensus, since the flat tax was his cornerstone issue when he ran for president in 1996.

“Well, this is a delightful evening,” he beamed. “Because when I ran . . . virtually every Republican denounced the idea of a flat tax. So education works. Some are slower than others, but they’re coming along.”

Abortion and immigration--two hot-button issues of the last presidential campaign--were touched on only briefly, and some candidates took care to couch their conservative replies with messages of inclusion and tolerance.

The meeting was briefly interrupted by a heckler who shouted complaints about excess military spending before being removed. The candidates also heard several questions about a variety of health care topics.

Bauer said he supported the right of Americans to sue their health maintenance organizations and said he was chagrined when his party’s leadership opposed such liability.

“I don’t like HMO bureaucrats and insurance bureaucrats,” he said. “My mother is 76 years old. I call her every day to check on her, and I can tell you one of her great frustrations is health care. I hope my party will get on the right side and be with the average American instead of the big HMOs.”

McCain repeated his proposal to fund health care benefits with money gleaned from canceling ethanol subsidies and other programs he depicts as corporate giveaways.

He also railed against wasteful Pentagon spending at a time when, he contended, military personnel were severely underpaid. And he used the opportunity to cast his reputed temper as moral indignation at such misspending.

“People say that perhaps John McCain gets angry,” McCain said. “My friends, I get angry when we spend $350 million on a carrier the Navy doesn’t want or need. Five hundred and some million on an airplane or C-130 that the Air Force has said for years they don’t need. And meanwhile, my dear friends, we have 12,000 enlisted families--brave young men and women--on food stamps.

“That’s a disgrace. That’s an outrage. I’m going to fix it as president of the United States, and I promise those men and women in the military, that’s my first priority.”