Dole Fed Up By Challengers’ Silver Spoons

First it was George Herbert Walker Bush, now Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Jr. For Bob Dole, it is a scenario all too familiar: Just when he thinks the presidential nomination is within reach, a preppy challenger with inherited wealth threatens his grip.

Dole isn’t the only 1996 Republican candidate to take potshots at Forbes’ privileged upbringing and publishing family fortune. “Richie Rich,” is Texas Sen. Phil Gramm’s label for Forbes. Pat Buchanan talks of Forbes crafting his flat tax plan “down at the yacht basin” and of a palatial Forbes estate complete with polo ponies.

But while these salvos are usually delivered with a good-natured smile, Forbes is clearly getting under Dole’s skin.

When he takes after Forbes’ wealth, it is sometimes done with deft humor; the other day Dole predicted he would win once voters “add up our assets,” but then he jokingly cringed and said of Forbes, “He’s got a lot of those.” But increasingly, Dole’s references to Forbes’ fortune are made with a nervous, biting sarcasm - not unlike some of the swipes Dole took at Bush in their 1988 nomination battle.

Over the weekend, for example, Dole was campaigning in New Hampshire and criticizing Forbes’ self-financed multimillion-dollar advertising campaign, most of it dedicated to labeling Dole a tax-raising, wasteful-spending Washington insider.

The Senate majority leader started with a joke: “I’ve seen so many negative ads about Bob Dole I probably wouldn’t vote for myself … I can’t be that bad.” After a brief pause, Dole scowled and added: “I can’t be that rich, either.”

It’s not just the money.

Aides who remember Dole’s 1988 experience say it frustrated him that Bush, the son of a wealthy senator, got to be vice president although his only experience in elective office was four years in the House.

“Nobody gave it to me,” Dole said in that campaign. “I didn’t have rich and powerful parents. I made it the hard way. I worked at it.”

Eight years later, it is much the same.

Clearly frustrated with Forbes’ surge, Dole now more and more recalls his hardscrabble upbringing in Russell, Kan.

Forbes, on the other hand, gets compared to Victor Kiam, the wealthy investor who boasts in TV ads that he liked his electric Remington razor so much “I bought the company.”

“What Forbes is saying is, I like it so much I bought the country,” Dole says. “I don’t think America is for sale.”Inside the Dole campaign, there is considerable debate over whether taking issue with Forbes’ wealth is worth the time. “But a lot of it comes straight from Dole,” said a senior campaign strategist who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It clearly bothers him.”Voters seem divided on the issue; some raise questions about Forbes’ wealth, while others say, a la millionaire Ross Perot, it insulates him from special interests.

Among those sympathetic to Dole is Buchanan. “His view is that you have to earn these things,” he said. “My view is that life is unfair.”