If you’re Pat Buchanan, it’s harder to move around. To get to Arcadia Parish in the Louisiana bayou last week, he flew commercial (in coach). In New Orleans he opened a campaign office, then rode in a Buick for hours across a flat terrain of swamps, flooded rice fields and billboard ads for boiled crawfish. But like Forbes, he had a point to make. Only his vision is bleak: a foreign, profit-driven “Them” destroying America with cheap labor, drugs and a flood tide of immigrants. In Rayne (“Frog Capital of the World”), his backdrop is an abandoned Fruit of the Loom factory. Only 4 years old, its 500 jobs are now in Honduras. “We have to look out for our country, for our communities,” he tells the crowd from the back of a pickup truck. “We have to be loyal to America, not just the bottom line.”
In this campaign there are candidates-and there are crusaders like Forbes and Buchanan. With balloting in the GOP presidential race only a month away, the mere candidates are focusing on contrasting themselves with the front runner, Sen. Bob Dole. In a new wave of ads and speeches they declare they are younger than Dole (Lamar Alexander), or tougher than Dole (Phil Gramm), or more thoughtful than Dole (Dick Lugar). But keep your eye on the crusaders. They have their share of anti-Dole ads, too. They offer something far more alluring: all-encompassing cosmologies that purport to explain everything.
The crusaders are already driving the GOP race. Spending $10 million so far on ads, Forbes has made the flat tax a leading issue (following story). In Iowa, large, curious crowds turn out to hear him talk about it. Buchanan doesn’t have the bucks, but he has passion – and an unerring instinct for the hot topic. Abortion, affirmative action and immigration are three he helped put in play. Coming up: state-sanctioned gambling. Buchanan is against it – and others will surely follow his lead. Forbes is now running second in polls in Iowa and New Hampshire; Buchanan has unshakable support in both.
The crusaders pose special problems for Dole. As polemicists who hold no offices, the crusaders need pull no punches. Yet Dole must be careful about striking back. They lead GOP elements he’ll need, now and later. Buchanan embodies the “cultural” wing that worships a lost “Ozzie and Harriet” America. Dole can ease away from an all-out pro-life stand, but doesn’t want Buchanan to lead a walkout at the GOP convention. Forbes stands for the supply-side “libertarian” wing that worships low taxes and free markets. Their current obsession is the flat tax. This week the Kemp Commission–appointed by Dole–will recommend one. The details will be left sufficiently vague so that Dole can attack the specifics of Forbes’s plan–but Dole would rather not be forced to do so.
In the meantime, Forbes and Buchanan will clash with each other–and provide the GOP race with what passes for substantive debate. Both are practiced rhetoricians. Between them, they’ve written thousands of argumentative columns. Both devour books on history, and orient themselves by it. Forbes is optimistic–almost giddy–about America’s prospects. Buchanan is Our Candidate of Perpetual Sorrows. Forbes is a confirmed internationalist, having led ad-sales and reporting trips to more than 60 countries. Buchanan is an America Firster who wants to bring U.S. troops home from Europe, erect high tariffs and build a huge “double-link fence” on the Mexican border. Forbes descends from freethinking Aberdeen Scots; Buchanan from staunch German Catholics. One believes in the Invisible Hand, and whatever the traffic will bear; the other in the medieval ecclesiastical doctrine of the “fair price,” which sets a morally sanctioned price for labor.
Both are using unconventional campaign methods. On his way to Dubuque, Forbes again declined to disclose his net worth or his campaign spending. He again waved away the suggestion that he release his tax returns. But back in Des Moines, Forbes’s money-and the way he’s spending it–are the hot topics. “On radio he’s outspending the other guys five to one,” said station owner Phil Hoover. Conventional theory holds that you can’t do well in the Iowa caucuses without a year’s worth of person-to-person networking. But large and curious crowds are turning out in Iowa to hear Forbes’s spiel. Rivals estimate that Forbes’s national spending could hit $25 million by the Feb. 20 New Hampshire primary.
Buchanan’s major flanking maneuver is in Louisiana, which plans to hold early caucuses on Feb. 6–six days before Iowa. Gramm is supposed to be in control in Louisiana. But Buchanan was the only GOP contender to give an early endorsement to Mike Foster, a Democrat turned Republican who won the governorship with the help of pro-life and anti-gambling activists. Now many of them–plus Foster’s media and campaign team–are working for Buchanan. “We’ve got 10,000 pro-life people who were for Foster who’ll be for Pat,” vows Pastor Billy Shanks of Metairie. To strengthen that alliace, Buchanan visited three churches in Cajun country one recent evening, including a Catholic church in Eunice that performed a solemn “memorial service for the unborn.”
Simplicity has its limits in a campaign. Buchanan’s radical nostalgia can seem intimidating to Americans who don’t feel they belong in his world. Forbes’s flat tax looks great on paper, but would abolish one of the most popular items in the tax code: the home mortgage interest deduction. The Dole camp is nearly obsessed with Forbes. “We’re watching him day by day,” says a top Dole strategist. That’s wise. If voters can’t find real leaders, they may settle for certitude.
