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Candiate Forbes leaves paper trail to presidency

The big news for magazine addicts is that one of their own, a professional magazine man, is running for president. Imagine: a fixture of the glossy pages as the great and powerful editor of national life.

Since the early 1970s, Steve Forbes has been not only a manager of the family biweekly, but also a regular columnist. Thus, we have an unusually extensive written record of his views on foreign affairs, fiscal policy, health care and fab Manhattan restaurants. Last year he advised anyone dining at Bolo on East 22nd Street to "try gazpacho with large shrimp, and the soft-shell crab with pappardelle."

We're talking hundreds of columns in the Steve Forbes archive, perhaps the only record of this sort that we've had on any presidential candidate, ever. Last week, Los Angeles Times writer Ronald Brownstein analyzed Forbes' writings based on a review of 563 columns dating back to 1975. Palpably yearning for a gotcha, Brownstein wrote that "in a handful of instances" the columns show Forbes "reversing long-held positions to align himself with prevailing attitudes in the GOP."

Despite the foreboding tone, the review didn't turn up much newsworthy stuff, policy-wise. "Mostly, however," Brownstein wrote, "the columns display a consistent, coherent and staunchly ideological way of looking at the world." Supply-side rhapsodist, admirer of Reagan, vaguely libertarian, etc.

But a column that's been running that long can't help but tell us a lot about what's in the writer's head and heart. Just looking at Forbes, one can see he is no self-contradicting vessel of complexity, no gonzo man of appetites. His wildman father, the late Malcolm, was more of that species. During the long period when they were writing side-by-side columns, they presented a total reversal of the classic magnate-scion dichotomy. Dad was a rakish voluptuary, while Junior was all prudence and restraint, his passions strictly above the neck.

In the Feb. 5, 1990, issue, for instance, Pops turns in a libidinous recollection of a favorite World War II movie star: "Marlene Dietrich was our sultriest, stunningly legged, husky-come-hither-voiced, sexiest goddess. . . . Millions of us fantasized, her German accent notwithstanding."

In the same column he not only praises "Rolling Stone magazine's brilliant creator, Jann Wenner," but also notes: "Wasn't it cool the way `Columbia'snagged our 11-ton, near-6-year-old science satellite that was losing altitude and heading for a likely burn-up . . .?" And cool old Malcolm offers this joyful little apothegm: "When dreams are more real than reality, you're alive."

"How to Get the Dow to 37,000" is the headline of Steve Forbes' column in the same issue. And below that, this piquant item: "Poland Needs Incentives, Not Austerity." Where Malcolm penned his restaurant tips in the first person, Steve's are attributed to "the distilled wisdom of brothers Bob, Kip and Tim" Forbes, as well as other Forbes staffers. No time to eat out when you're boning up on Polish econ!

But since taking over his father's editor-in-chief column, Steve has cultivated a few of his own passions. Last April, just before plugging that crab dish, he revealed a certain yearning for his own Dietrich equivalent: "We can't wait until Maureen Dowd begins her twice-weekly column on the New York Times Op-Ed page this summer," he wrote, referring to the cunning columnist as the "decidedly undowdy Dowd." The same month he proposed the "dazzling" Pamela Harriman as a "natural" for secretary of state. Cold shower time, Steve-oh!

Still, the most revealing peek into the candidate's hot core has to be these lines from his review last June of a book by Steve Neal called "Dark Horse: A Biography of Wendell Willkie": "Fascinating story of one of the most improbable figures in American presidential history. Wendell Willkie was an electric utility CEO at a time when the industry was in ill repute, a Democrat who didn't become a Republican until he decided to seek the GOP presidential nod, and an advocate of an activist foreign policy when most Americans were isolationists. He had no political base. He was distrusted by party regulars, and he entered no primaries. Yet, with support of a handful of publishers and the fervent backing of hundreds of thousands of amateurs, Willkie won the nomination in one of the liveliest, most raucous conventions ever.''

Just two months after writing those words, Steve Forbes announced his intention to run for president.