How long will the big smiles last? Bush, who had been sailing with seeming invincibility toward the Republican nomination thanks to the voluminous support of party elders and money titans, faced some actual voters in Iowa. The results were impressive, but they also suggested this campaign is about to enter a new and far more competitive phase. Bush won 31.3 percent of the straw-poll vote. Steve Forbes, who rewrote the book on conspicuous campaign consumption, followed with an acceptable but not overwhelming 20.8 percent.
Forbes has a target now. In 1996 the publisher waged a relentlessly negative campaign against front runner Bob Dole. This time the warrior with the nerdy exterior may prove to be just as willing to spend his millions to tear down his opponent–suggesting, for starters, that Bush is an intellectual lightweight, simply not up to the challenge of facing a Democratic nominee.
The Bush people are spoiling for the fight. They believe that Americans are sick of harsh, partisan attacks. As they see it, the candidate who counterpunches does better than the candidate who tries to land the first blows. Look for them to decry the politics of division and call on all Republicans to rally behind the one man who seems able to get the GOP faithful what they desperately want: the White House.
The brawl will be fascinating. While Bush is the paragon of the Republican establishment, Forbes is the paragon of the conservative establishment. The two forces are not the same thing. The Republicans may want to read Forbes magazine, but they don’t want Forbes for president. They are pragmatic business types who want to win, and who distrust hot social issues like abortion; the conservatives consider themselves champions of an ideology that is saddled with lily-livered opportunists. The conservatives are headquartered in think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and among the right-wing commentators Steve Forbes hangs out with; find the Republicans in upscale suburbs across the country, where Bushies live–people who don’t spend their afternoons reading policy tomes on the flat tax.
Bush and Forbes outclassed their opponents in Iowa. The Bush campaign bid $43,500 just to ensure that the site of its tent in Ames would be better than the Forbes tent’s. The publisher offered the only air-conditioned tent and a full range of entertainment options: musical acts, inflatable-moon bounces and rock-climbing sets for the kids, an orange shirt and a book of Forbes philosophy for the true believers.
The folks with the big tents now move on to other battlefields. But for the little-tent campaigns, the results could be catastrophic. Of the Have-Not candidates, only Elizabeth Dole (who finished third) and Gary Bauer (fourth) survived with any political energy. Dole surprised those who thought that her mix of professional women and feminists would never show up at a backslapping GOP party. Bauer overcame his own financial disadvantages with the commitment of his Christian supporters–and a photo op with the state fair’s Butter Lady, who carved a sculpture of the Last Supper out of butter.
Prospects for the rest are bleak. That goes for Lamar Alexander, who got 1,428 votes for his 80 visits to Iowa and finished sixth–and for Dan Quayle, who finished a humiliating eighth. Buchanan (fifth), fading in the GOP, still might make a run as a Reform Party standard-bearer.
In the end, the losers railed against the evil influence of money with a passion unseen since the days of Saint Francis of Assisi. “This campaign should not be about raising money. It should be about raising values,” stormed Quayle. As Bush and Forbes move on, they will run into Arizona Sen. John McCain in New Hampshire and South Carolina. McCain is the GOP’s foremost advocate of campaign-finance reform. If the contest grows more bad-tempered–and thus ever more expensive–he might have a lot to talk about.
