“This [book] is not a prescription,” Mr. Berland told The Observer at the intimate gathering in the magazine company's futuristic Executive Dining Room. “It’s not a how-to-be-successful. That’s such a B.S. concept of how can you be successful; there is no formula.”

Instead, the book, written by Mr. Berland and fellow strategic adviser Douglas Schoen, gathers some of their most prestigious clientele, who shared their stories, and then looked for a common denominators and dividing them up in five archetypes. “We’re pollsters,” Mr. Berland explained.

“The theme through all of these stories is that early on in their career they were introspective of what they were good at and what they found satisfying and leverage their strength.”

Among those featured in the book are Forbes Magazine publisher Steve Forbes; NBC Universal's president and CEO, Jeff Zucker; Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan; Playboy CEO Christie Heffner; and model–turned–reality TV hostess Heidi Klum. Also included, Condé Nast group president David Carey, who was played host of the party.

If there is one thing Mr. Carey had achieved, it was filling the room with these highly successful people—and getting them to wear name tags. So without any PR assistance, a reporter was able to spot Niche Media’s Jason Binn chatting to Mont Blanc’s Jan-Patrick Schmitz, Parade magazine editor Janice Kaplan being captivated by Yale University’s CFO Gwendolyn Sykes and Gary Bettman, the NHL's commissioner, just by furtively glancing at their lapels.

“I’m in the do-gooder category,” Ms. Sykes told The Observer. “I think they categorized me quite well, what do you think?” The former NASA CFO, however, claims she was not introspective from an early age. “I can’t honestly say that I was,” she mused.

“As a wee lass, I wanted to be an attorney, a lawyer, I wrote my grandmother notes about it. I’m as far away from an attorney you can get!”

“I don’t introspect a lot,” said Mr. Bettman. “Michael’s view of the world, that it’s all about introspection—I think that was really his conclusion after doing the interview.”

The archetypes, however, proved to be spot-on in some cases.

“I think [the book] is actually not about the people in it,” said Mr. Schmitz. “I think the country’s looking for leadership, and that’s what the book talks about, 'cause leadership is not a single, one-fits-all formula, and leaders come with very different skills that they have, so there are examples that are needed to lead, and that’s what I think the book is all about.”

Mr. Schmitz was asked which archetype he saw himself in. “A natural-born leader," he said with a smile.

On Monday, The New York Times closed down Play, its quarterly sports magazine. John Koblin talked to The Times Magazine's editorial director Gerry Marzorati who told him, “It was losing hundreds of thousands of dollars over several years and when you’re not going to see that turn around, that’s the problem."

Also on Monday, MinnPost.com's David Brauer brought news of imminent cuts at The Minnesota Star Tribune. The New York Post's Keith Kelly also reported a 3 percent staff cut at TV Guide. (No wonder Ad Age's Nat Ives felt compelled to write, For Thousands of Laid-Off Mag Employees, a Hard Road Ahead that day.)

Women's Wear Daily's Stephanie D. Smith had some details about restructuring at Forbes, which hit the magazine's sales and marketing departments. Ms. Smith warned "Though Monday’s consolidation focused on the business side, the edit side is soon to follow." (Last week various outlets reported forbesauto.com was closing. Valleywag's Owen Thomas had the memo from C.E.O. Steve Forbes; Paid Content's David Kaplan said its entire staff was let go.) Mediaweek's Lucia Moses put the number of laid off Forbes employees at 43.

On Tuesday, Portfolio's Mixed Media blogger Jeff Bercovici reported that Condé Nast's Lucky was laying off three editors. Gawker's Hamilton Nolan reported that Time, Inc.'s Cottage Living would be folding. "[T]he economy inhibited its ability to grow and therefore, sadly, we had to make the decision to close it," Mr. Nolan quoted an internal memo sent to staff. Mr. Nolan also had a report that American Lawyer was letting go of nine employees, some in editorial.

And then it became Wednesday.

Here are some excerpts from the conversation (you can find the whole transcript here):

First off, Mr. Zuckerman thinks the $700 billion bailout sucks:

Mort thinks John McCain blew a crazy good opportunity when he decided to support the bailout:

Mort says the GM Building was a sweet deal, no matter what the critics say:

The best financial lesson Mr. Zuckerman ever learned:

And finally, according to Mort, the recession is going to be a killer:

Forbes will sell the eight-story 60 Fifth Avenue, its headquarters since 1965, for one simple, very New York reason, according to C.E.O. Steve Forbes: space.

"As with many other media companies, such as Conde Nast and The New York Times, the business has simply outgrown the building,” Mr. Forbes told Forbes.com. “We will be working with a developer to create a new headquarters in New York City.”

Brokerage Cushman & Wakefield will handle the sale of 60 Fifth. The New York Post on Friday morning speculated that the 145,000-square-foot building could fetch a price of around $140 million, though one wonders if that number won’t be a lot higher, considering this is the most active building-sales markets in New York City history.

"The record-high, $123 billion budget deal neither reforms nor reshapes," according to Fred Dicker.

At a press conference yesterday explaining the budget, Spitzer was "stumbling through answers to basic questions," according to Jacob Gershman.

But the budget does move the state towards reform, which was Spitzer's goal all along, according to Newsday's editorial board.

Lawmakers and the public should be given a chance to study the budget, according to the Times Union editorial board.

Rudy Giuliani and his wife will be interviewed by Barbara Walters tomorrow.

Giuliani, who was endorsed by Steve Forbes, backed the idea of a flat tax-- something he opposed when he was mayor.

Mike Bloomberg said the timetable approved by Congress for withdrawing troops from Iraq was "untenable."

Hillary Clinton was endorsed by the National Organization of Women.

A person who told a witness in the Sean Bell shooting to keep quiet was arrested.

The former Brooklyn judge on trial for bribery had some Machiavellian advice about power and perception.

35 Nassau officials will lose their take-home vehicles.

And voter fraud is a myth, according to the Brennan Center's Executive Director Michael Waldan and Justin Levitt, an attorney there.

-- Azi Paybarah

The attendees were mostly movement conservatives: economist Arthur Laffer, economist and media personality Larry Kudlow, Wall Street macher Dick Gilder and other old-guard veterans. Mr. Forbes went through his usual spiel: We need a flat-tax now, and give the surplus back to the taxpayers. Then Mr. Forbes' speech was done. It was time for Q.&A. From the back of the room, up jumped Jack Kemp, the old N.F.L. quarterback, Presidential candidate and Vice Presidential nominee.

Instead of a question, though, came a rallying cry: "As supply-siders, we need to do all that we can to make Steve Forbes Treasury Secretary," Mr. Kemp announced in his excitable rasp.

The applause was nothing more than polite, but the seed had been sown. The supply-side battle for hearts and minds would go on.

Is it morning again in America? A small cadre of supply-side true believers certainly seems to think so. Jude Wanniski, Jack Kemp, Richard Gilder and Larry Kudlow are all showing a bit more spring to their step these days.

And who can blame them? The exuberant, tax-slashing optimism of George W. Bush smacks eerily of another happy-go-lucky governor from a big sunny state who was vague on the details but stubborn on the message. Now they want to lock in their gains by getting their man named Treasury Secretary.

And what a man it is: Steve Forbes.

A done deal, though, it is not. The Bush folks may be returning their phone calls, and Larry Lindsey, Governor Bush's chief economic adviser, does indeed have impeccable supply-side credentials (his 1990 The Growth Experiment was an important validating text for the model). But first things first: These guys need to start getting along. Years of internecine policy and personal disputes have left the supply-side movement in tatters, its influence at a low ebb. Now comes the catalyst for its comeback: Mr. Forbes.

And where would its headquarters be? A small brown house on a quiet street in Morristown, N. J. It's where Jude Wanniski, editorial bomb thrower for the Wall Street Journal in the early 1970's, holds court these days. In his prime-with his 117 editorial-page missives a year from the conservative front-Mr. Wanniski popularized supply-side economics for the masses and also served as philosophical muse for the likes of Ronald Reagan, Mr. Kemp and Mr. Forbes. Now he runs a small consultancy, Polyconomics, and oversees a supply-side mini-university on his Web site. He is 64 years old, his preaching days for the most part done. But there is one more mission to run: Get Mr. Forbes appointed as Treasury Secretary.

He owes it to Steve, after all. It was Mr. Wanniski's eight-page memo, hammered out on a laptop in Hawaii in 1995, that lured Mr. Forbes from horse-country privacy into the glare and humiliation of two failed Presidential campaigns. Mr. Wanniski needed a supply-side warrior to enter the 1996 Presidential race, and the Forbes magazine publisher was more than ready to throw himself upon that sword. Sure, Mr. Forbes and Mr. Wanniski have had their ups and downs, but in the end Mr. Forbes was a true believer. And now, with Dick Cheney as Vice President, there would be someone in Washington who would read Mr. Wanniski's goddamn memos again.

Voila! The Curve!

Mr. Wanniski met Mr. Cheney in 1974, in the cocktail lounge of the Hotel Washington, with Arthur Laffer, a then-obscure technocrat-economist in the private sector who had been chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget in 1971 under Richard Nixon. Mr. Cheney, then 33, was with his boss, Donald Rumsfeld, chief of staff to President Gerald Ford. The Republicans had just been creamed in the mid-term elections. Mr. Wanniski and Mr. Laffer were trying to get the message across: Cut taxes. Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld were not getting it. Worried about inflation, the Ford administration's economists were pushing for a tax surcharge. Frustrated, Mr. Laffer started scribbling on a napkin: a scrawl of lines and axes. The more you raise taxes, the less revenue you will take in. The law of diminishing returns. The Laffer curve. For the first time, it was out of the classroom and in political play.

Twenty-six years later, Mr. Wanniski sat in his modest office and remembered:

"When I saw the curve, I said, 'Wow. This is it; I can make this happen.' The supply-side revolution was left for me to promote."

But President Ford wimped out on the tax cut, pushing through a heretical demand-side tax rebate instead. In came Jimmy Carter and oblivion. But in 1979, Mr. Wanniski's cause became the Reagan economic plan.

Mr. Wanniski, however, was frozen out, seen by the Reagan campaign as too ideological, too pure even for that group.

Why would people listen to him now?

Then there was Mr. Laffer. They had a falling out in the early 1980's over fees in a short-lived consulting relationship. As Mr. Laffer told The Observer recently, "We drifted apart. Jude is Jude. He will always be banging tables. Indeed, if he was there when Mary was in the manger, he would have made sure it happened properly."

Then, to a lesser extent, there was Robert Bartley, Mr. Wanniski's former mentor at The Wall Street Journal , about whom he now says: "Bob Bartley is intellectually corrupt. He has squandered the last seven years by trying to put Clinton in jail."

Next came trouble with Jack Kemp. Mr. Kemp was on CNBC a few months ago, talking up the Bush plan on Social Security and taxes. Mr. Wanniski couldn't believe it; he screamed at the television set. Wahhhhhh .

"Jack has to know how horrified I am at his behavior," Mr. Wanniski said.

"The Bush plan is sub-optimal. It has been designed by Daddy's economists-Michael Boskin and Marty Feldstein. And there he is, throwing big wet kisses. Look, I know he wants to be loved, but if that is the case he should stay out of the arena. I' m 64-I'm running out of time, and he is undermining all the work I'm doing through back channels."

Mr. Wanniski fired off a stinging memo that very evening, on his laptop, while still in front of the TV. It was a nasty memo and feelings were hurt.

"We are not on speaking terms-he went over the edge," said Mr. Kemp. "I don't need Jude Wanniski telling me what to do."

Well, what's done is done. There is nothing more Mr. Wanniski can do for Mr. Kemp. Mr. Kemp is on the board of at least a dozen Internet companies, at last count. He has left the arena.

The Forbes Factor

But not Mr. Forbes. After spending $70 million on two failed campaigns, he's still ready for the call. Mr. Wanniski was Mr. Forbes' Svengali, same as with Mr. Kemp. In the late 70's, the twentysomething Mr. Forbes would tag along for the supply-side confabs with Mr. Kemp and the gang in D.C. By the mid-80's, Mr. Forbes' chauffeur was dropping him off, on his way from Far Hills to his Manhattan office, for one-on-one breakfasts at the Madison Hotel in Convent Station, N.J., near Mr. Wanniski's home. Mr. Forbes was eager to learn; he devoured the Wanniski canon and spit it right back out on the pages of Forbes.

So when Mr. Kemp pulled back in 1996, Mr. Forbes-now so ideologically buff-was ready to enter the Presidential race. But then came the mistakes: He spurned Reagan puppet-master John Sears for some Jesse Helms–affiliated campaign operatives from North Carolina, real killers, who let loose such a flood of negative campaign ads that he poisoned the very air around himself. The ugliness of his campaign tactics pissed off Mr. Kemp, too, who withheld his endorsement (he finally caved, when it was too late to help Mr. Forbes).

The upshot: Once again Mr. Wanniski couldn't get his phone calls returned. So he fired off a memo to Mr. Forbes-vitriolic, personal.

"It was so harsh," Mr. Wanniski recalled. "I threw everything at him but the kitchen sink. He said he could never forgive me, that I went over the top."

Mr. Wanniski watched from afar as Mr. Forbes reprised his quixotic bid in a 2000 run. Poor Steve-for all his political failings, the guy was still a member of the faith. He would be the perfect Treasury Secretary. He might even drive the capital gains tax to zero. He would be such a superior choice to the Bush candidate du jour , Donald Marron of PaineWebber. Mr. Forbes is not a compromiser. But with so many bridges burned, how to make this appointment happen?

Mr. Wanniski went to Dick Gilder-the top supply-sider on Wall Street and an original Forbes supporter going back to 1996. Great idea, said Mr. Gilder.

Mr. Gilder also runs money for right-minded scribe Bob Novak. His libertarian impulses run deep; he was a founding trustee of the Central Park Conservancy and a vocal proponent for privatizing management of the park.

Mr. Wanniski's approach to Mr. Gilder seemed to pay off. Before you knew it, supply-side columnist, economist and talking head Larry Kudlow was penning a "Where is Steve Forbes?" editorial for the National Review . A week later, in Philadelphia, Mr. Kemp got up and said the magic words.

"Forbes will make a great Treasury Secretary," Mr. Gilder said from his sprawling, newly acquired oceanside spread in Islesboro, Me. "He has always talked about lower taxes." As far as Mr. Gilder is concerned, the tax rate is an inverse indicator for the stock market: When the tax rate goes up, the market goes down, and vice versa.

ING Barings investment strategist Larry Kudlow also believes-and with the big-grinned ardor of one who has flown high and crashed, only to rise once again. In 1978 he was 30 years old, a zealous but unknown economist for PaineWebber penning arcane monetarist rants about the money supply and gold when Mr. Wanniski discovered him.

Before he knew it, Mr. Kudlow was an economist at the Office of Management and Budget in Washington at the dawn of the Reagan era. Returning to Wall Street and Bear Stearns in the mid-80's, he lived large and high as the street's most prominent supply-side cheerleader, using the newly launched CNBC and other media to spread the word. Famously, he crashed in 1994, brought down by coke and booze.

Out of Hazleton in 1995, Mr. Kudlow did a year on bent knee working for Arthur Laffer's consultancy in San Diego while recharging his spiritual and academic batteries as well.

In 1996, CNBC took him back. Now it's Squawk Box once a month, speaking gigs, a column at the National Review , a seat on the Club for Growth board. "Getting back into the life is just so great. I have not had a drink or a snort in five years. People forget: In 1995, my life was over. I'd destroyed everything-I was missing TV shows, wasn't filing columns. I'd stopped showing up for life. All of this now … it's a miracle," Mr. Kudlow said in his deep, made-for-radio voice, luxuriating in the plush leather of his company car.

These days, Mr. Kudlow says, he is getting his phone calls returned. "I've had no trouble getting my views across-my pals are John Cogan and Marty Anderson [Reagan-era policy wonks]. I've got access, and I've been pleasantly surprised as to how W. has stuck with his marginal-tax-reduction plan and in general touts Reagan."

He, too, has been active in pushing for Mr. Forbes. "I raised it personally with Don Evans [Bush's closest friend and chief fund-raiser] as well as Bush when I was in Philadelphia. 'Don,' I said, 'you guys are going to be attacked on issues like Social Security and taxes. You need people from the outside, businessmen, to defend you. Reagan had Bill Simon, Clinton had Rubin. The question is: Who is your Bob Rubin going to be?' My recommendation, of course, was Forbes."

Later, on the air, Mr. Kudlow reacts to that old charge of "voodoo economics" with a there-you-go-again Reagan look.

"Look," he said, his voice booming out in the empty studio, "when Bush wins and carries both houses with him, you are going to see an across-the-board marginal-tax-rate reduction. Forget about the lost revenue. You just don't need it. Tax revenue is already rolling in at three to four times the inflation rate. And let me add this: If you lower tax rates, economic growth actually expands, and tax revenues go up as the rate goes down. It's called the Laffer curve."

The lights dim. The weekend is here and Mr. Kudlow is beaming. He had done it. "I can't believe I actually got the Laffer curve in!" he crowed. The supply-siders are back. "We are tan, rested and ready," he announced.

Back in Morristown, Mr. Wanniski is not tuning in-nor does he seem all that tan or rested. He and Mr. Kudlow are another ruptured relationship. They haven't spoken in 10 years, despite the pivotal role that Mr. Wanniski played in launching Mr. Kudlow's career. There have been disputes over deals gone bad in Russia and, more recently, some confusion as to who gets the credit for forecasting the Nasdaq correction last spring.

"I blew up at him. Sent him an e-mail," Mr. Wanniski said. "E-mails are great. You can communicate with people you are not speaking with."

There are no regrets, though. These days, Mr. Wanniski spends more of his time with Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader who has become a willing audience for Mr. Wanniski's proselytizing ("He says I'm the only white guy he trusts") than he does with a newly ascendant Arthur Laffer, who is now being mooted to serve as George W.'s Council of Economic Advisers chair.

"I know I've had fallings-out with people," Mr. Wanniski said. "But there are a lot of strange bedfellows in the supply-side revolution-a lot of prima donnas like me. But I am a theologian. This is a mission I have. There is a power moving me that I don't quite understand. I truly believe that I can save people and that the supply-side revolution can save the world from decline, poverty, disease and war."

What does Steve Forbes say about the latest tactic in Mr. Wanniski's supply-side crusade? He is now back penning editorials for Forbes and seems a bit bemused by it all. And after more than three years of school-boy optimism about his political prospects, a bit of cold political realism seems to have set in.

"I don't think it will be offered," Mr. Forbes said a bit resignedly, when asked about the chances that he would become Treasury Secretary in the event of George W.'s election. "Others have a higher claim than I do. I'm flattered, but I am really not counting on it."

And perhaps he shouldn't. The Bush campaign today is all about occupying the soft, fuzzy middle, dulling the hard edges of ideology and Newt Gingrich-to say nothing of the residual bitterness of the Republican primary.

"It's a long shot," says one insider sympathetic to the Forbes push. "Forbes has had prickly relations with Bush. It's a personal thing.

In varying degrees, George W. Bush, Steve Forbes and John McCain have all given aid and comfort to the enemies of the Union as they campaign in South Carolina, where the Stars and Bars still flies over the state capitol. Mr. Forbes has blandly allowed that he thinks the question of the Confederate flag is a matter to be decided by that state's residents, and therefore in no need of commentary from a would-be President; Mr. Bush agrees, adding slickly that he himself is too sensitive to display such an offensive symbol in Texas. Even worse is Mr. McCain, proud descendant of rebel soldiers, who explains that to him the Confederate flag is a "symbol of heritage."

Unfortunately, the once-moderate Mr. Forbes has long since proved his eagerness to win over the most extreme elements of his party in what is probably a futile quest to raise his percentages from the single digits. Mr. Bush has no such excuse, and it is particularly galling to observe his evasive response on this issue. It was his father who won the Presidency in 1988 by transforming the Pledge of Allegiance into a partisan fetish, and both he and his father have urged that Congress abridge constitutional guarantees of free speech by making flag-burning a crime. So the Texas Governor is obviously attuned to the symbolic value of flags, and as a Yale history graduate he may even understand that simultaneous allegiance to both Union and Confederacy is impossible.

Perhaps Mr. Bush and Mr. Forbes think the whole issue of the Confederate flag is a minor matter, however offensive its display may be to the black citizens of South Carolina. But Mr. McCain certainly knows better, if only because his campaign in that state is being assisted by one of the most active apologists for the Southern slavocracy.

That would be Richard Quinn, a top coordinator of the McCain effort in South Carolina and the editor of a publication called Southern Partisan , which functions as the propaganda spearhead of the "neo-Confederate" movement. As careful readers may recall from last year's controversy over the Council of Conservative Citizens, the neo-Confederates are diehard defenders of what they deem to have been the honorable cause of secession; along with their romanticization of the Old South, they tend to advocate a "conservatism" that is racially chauvinistic, hostile to immigrants and often blatantly bigoted against blacks, Hispanics, Jews and other groups. Like many former Dixiecrats who abandoned the Democratic Party during the struggle over desegregation, the neo-Confederates are mostly Republicans now.

They are a very peculiar kind of Republican, however, as anyone who peruses Mr. Quinn's magazine-one of the milder neo-Confederate publications-would instantly discover. These are Republicans who vilify Lincoln and venerate Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate general who founded the Ku Klux Klan. Their view of the Civil War, invariably referred to as the "War for Southern Independence," is that the wrong side won. And it isn't at all clear that Mr. Quinn and his associates have set aside those ancient enmities in favor of American patriotism.

Not so long ago, Southern Partisan published a fawning interview with Dr. Clyde Wilson, a University of South Carolina history professor billed as "one of the intellectual giants of the contemporary South."

Without casting any doubt on his professional stature, Dr. Wilson is also a neo-Confederate ideologue. He articulated that movement's venomous disdain for this country without embarrassment, in words that are still featured on Southern Partisan 's Web site. After suggesting that the South should still be seeking to secede, the professor said: "It's terrible that Southerners have been so willing to sacrifice their lives for the United States … We have to stop that kind of knee-jerk American allegiance. And I think that's happening. The younger people certainly don't have that kind of knee-jerk patriotism, and a lot of the [World War II] generation don't either. Talk to any number of WWII vets. Contrary to what you might expect, they aren't flag-waving to the United States …"

This is the sort of insult to veterans and patriots that a key McCain supporter has spent a lifetime promoting. Not everyone who waves the Dixie flag holds such abhorrent views, of course. But perhaps the Republican candidates ought to think again about what it means for an enemy flag to wave over an American statehouse.

The salvos between Mr. Forbes and the R.L.C. show just how far Mr. Forbes has come in the past four years. Where once he would have uncomfortably shifted in his well-polished shoes when asked about gay rights or abortion, now he makes a point in every speech of touting his social conservatism. So this Northeastern Republican is playing to the Christian Right at the very moment when other Northeastern Republicans are trying to move the party to the center, in the same way that the Democratic Leadership Council vanquished the party's left wing in the early 1990's and set the stage for Bill Clinton's victory in 1992.

At stake in the battle between Mr. Forbes, the unlikely champion of heartland social conservatism, and the R.L.C. is the party elite's effort to get away from declarations of cultural warfare which have alienated swing voters and refocus the party on pocketbook issues-the very issues that Mr. Forbes championed as a flat-taxer in 1996. The Republican hierarchy sees Governor Bush as its answer to Mr. Clinton, a man whose "compassionate conservatism" serves as a signal to voters that the party is moving away from slash-and-burn rhetoric.

The battle began in mid-November when the R.L.C. launched a $100,000 ad campaign in Iowa, New Hampshire and Washington, D.C. The ads, entitled "Warning," featured a woman looking directly into the camera and talking about Mr. Forbes. "When Steve Forbes ran for President last time, I kind of liked him," the woman said. "But then he spent all his money tearing down his opponents. He hurt the Republican Party … Now, I see he just might start in again with those negative ads. That's just going to help the Democrats. Someone needs to tell Steve Forbes that if he doesn't have anything nice to say-don't say anything at all."

Mr. Forbes cried foul, charging that the commercials were a back-door attempt by the Bush campaign to inoculate itself against potential, indeed inevitable, negative ads. "I think it's a disgrace that you'd have a bogus front organization like that running attack ads against me," he told The Observer . "If Governor Bush wants to criticize me, he should come out in the open. Let's have a vigorous and honest debate instead of doing attack ads behind other groups that are funded by your big fund-raisers."

Immediately upon the ad's release, the Forbes campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission, alleging that the Bush campaign was behind the R.L.C. ads. According to the complaint, eight Bush "pioneers"-people who've pledged to raise $100,000 apiece for Mr. Bush-are listed as "leaders" of the R.L.C. Further, the complaint says, the chair and both co-chairs of the R.L.C. are key Bush contributors.

Mark Miller, the R.L.C.'s executive director, scoffed at the connections between the Bush campaign and the R.L.C. "I didn't coordinate with the Bush campaign," he insisted. "If you take any group of prominent Republicans, you will find a majority of Bush supporters. "

Though the McCain campaign also chimed in with its own criticism of the R.L.C., Georgette Mosbacher, Mr. McCain's national co-chair who is a member of the R.L.C. executive committee, defended the ads. "I understand why somebody would think that ad would be specifically targeted at Forbes, but I don't think that was the purpose," she said. "The R.L.C. leadership has never discussed targeting any Republican. [The ad] means to speak to all candidates. It's generic in its message. You can make the leap because Forbes did it in 1996."

And, indeed, the Forbes campaign made the leap. They unleashed an ad attacking the R.L.C. as a "liberal" proxy for the Bush campaign. The R.L.C. came right back, airing a 60-second radio spot in Iowa that points out that Mr. Forbes was once a major supporter of the Committee for Responsible Government, the R.L.C.'s forerunner.

How far the erstwhile allies have strayed.

That Was Then …

The committee was formed shortly after Pat Buchanan's sharp-edged speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston. Among its founders was Lewis Eisenberg, a prominent Republican Party fund-raiser and chair of Granite Capital who has since been appointed chair of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. "We sensed there was no organized voice [for moderate Republicanism], and we could indeed bring the perception of the party back to the center right," Mr. Eisenberg said. The Committee was given its current name, the Republican Leadership Council, in 1997. The R.L.C.'s Web site describes its mission as promoting "fiscal conservatism and social inclusiveness" with no "litmus tests" on abortion.

Among the early supporters of the Committee were Governors Pataki and Whitman, both of whom are pro-choice, as well as former Gov. William Weld of Massachusetts and Gov. John Rowland of Connecticut. Another supporter was, wouldn't you know, Mr. Forbes himself, who gave $10,000 to the committee in 1995. According to Mr. Eisenberg, Mr. Forbes "was important when we were forming this thing, both financially and in terms of his name."

Though Mr. Eisenberg insists the group in its current manifestation as the R.L.C. is much more geographically balanced, it can't shake its connection to the Northeast (read liberal) wing of the party.

And the Forbes campaign, particularly in conservative Iowa, is making hay of that. Mr. Forbes' aides are openly chortling that a connection with the "liberal" R.L.C. won't help Mr. Bush during the primaries, when conservatives usually hold sway.

… This Is Now

But the ironies go even deeper. Political consultant Kieran Mahoney has been close to the R.L.C. for several years, Mr. Eisenberg said. A 1998 poll conducted for the R.L.C. by Mr. Mahoney concluded that the party should focus on economic and education issues, not a "moral agenda."

Mr. Mahoney hails from the conservative wing of the party, indeed, from a movement built in reaction to Nelson Rockefeller's brand of Northeastern Republicanism. His father, Daniel Mahoney, founded New York's Conservative Party in the mid-1960's, and Kieran Mahoney broke into politics by producing harsh commercials with legendary Republican adman Arthur Finkelstein, who helped make the label "liberal" a dirty word in American politics. But now Mr. Mahoney is credited with helping produce a commercial warning other Republicans not to be negative.

Apparently all's fair in politics. "Kieran Mahoney isn't telling anyone not to go negative," Mr. Miller said. "The R.L.C. is."

Though Mr. Miller insisted the commercials were designed by a team including himself, Mr. Mahoney's partner Greg Strimple and New Jersey adman Lawrence Weitzner, one Republican who has worked closely with Mr. Weitzner and Mr. Mahoney told The Observer that Mr. Mahoney "always writes the scripts."

Mr. Weitzner produced nearly all of the commercials in 1998 for Governor Pataki, Senator D'Amato, former New York State Attorney General Dennis Vacco and the New York Republican State Committee. Mr. Mahoney was a top strategist on all those campaigns. Neither Mr. Mahoney nor Mr. Weitzner returned The Observer 's phone calls.

Mr. Mahoney's role in the R.L.C.'s commercials has raised some eyebrows in Republican circles. How can "the same people who ran the most negative campaign in my memory [Senator Alfonse D'Amato's failed re-election bid in 1998] be criticizing others for running a negative campaign"? asked Staten Island Borough President Guy Molinari, who is chairing Senator McCain's campaign in New York.

That the Forbes campaign has yet to go negative-in a nuclear sort of way-is a sign of its own frustrating position. Clearly, some Forbes aides, who have repeatedly hinted the negative barrage is coming, would like to see the candidate start differentiating himself from Mr. Bush. But to do so could have the effect of peeling voters from Mr. Bush and sending them to Mr. McCain, who is hot on Mr. Bush's heels in New Hampshire and Iowa.

It is Mr. Forbes, himself, who appears to be dragging his feet. On Nov. 19, days after the R.L.C.'s "Warning" started to air, aides touted a "major address" at the Waldorf-Astoria that would be a response to Mr. Bush's criticism of the party's cultural warriors. But when Mr. Forbes stood up before an audience of expectant conservatives sated on roast chicken and puréed squash, he said, "I'm going to do with my speech what Washington does with your money. Throw it away." And he proceeded to deliver a soft, mildly critical analysis of Mr. Bush's much-publicized attack on the G.O.P.'s cultural right.

The next day, press reports asserted that Mr. Forbes had chosen "subtle over slashing" this time around.

Mr. Mahoney must be smiling.

But in one of the stranger twists of this Presidential season, Mr. Forbes may finally get his wish to go head to head with Mr. Bush in the New York primary on March 7. The irony is Mr. Forbes has Gov. George Pataki, one of the Texas Governor's biggest supporters, to thank for this lucky break.

Mr. Pataki and the entire state Republican Party may have sworn allegiance to Mr. Bush. But the Governor did Mr. Forbes a huge favor earlier this year when he signed an election law reform bill that eased some of the state's notoriously cumbersome ballot access requirements. The new law virtually guarantees the millionaire publisher a place on the primary ballot. It also means many New Yorkers may go to the polls on March 7 and find they can't pull the lever for Mr. McCain.

Bill Dal Col, Mr. Forbes' national campaign manager, tried to sound as magnanimous as possible about his opponent's misfortune. "It's an advantage we'd rather not have," he told The Observer . "We'd prefer to have everybody on the ballot. But it's an advantage, sure."

Basically, the new law reduced the number of signatures that Presidential hopefuls must collect to earn a place on the primary ballot. They used to have to gather names from 5 percent or 1,250, whichever is less, of all enrolled party members in each of the state's 31 Congressional districts. Now they only have to gather 0.5 percent or 1,000 signatures to qualify.

But the Governor and his legislative allies didn't get too carried away in their reformist zeal. Getting on the New York primary ballot remains a Herculean task. "It's still one of the most difficult states," said Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access , a national election law newsletter. "In a sense, you have to organize 31 different petition drives."

Mr. Bush won't have any problem getting on the ballot. He can rely on the state Republican Party's foot soldiers to gather his signatures. And the popular front-runner has the party's veteran election-law specialists at his beck and call if his opponents try to disqualify his names.

Mr. Forbes won't be hard pressed, either. He can afford to hire lawyers and pay campaign workers an hourly wage to gather signatures. In fact, Mr. Dal Col said the publishing mogul may only have to spend $750,000 of his dwindling fortune to get on the March 7 primary ballot. When Mr. Forbes ran for President in 1996, he invested $1 million on a signature collection in New York.

However, the new law won't do much for underfunded candidates like Mr. McCain. The Senator is relying entirely on inexperienced volunteers to collect his signatures when the process begins on Nov. 30. Therefore, his aides fear he may not get on the ballot in all 31 districts. "That would be our goal, but it is a daunting goal," said Staten Island Borough President Guy Molinari, the McCain campaign's state chairman. "I would love to do it. I'm not sure that we can."

What's worse, Mr. McCain's green campaign workers are likely to submit petitions riddled with misspelled names, wrong addresses and other errors. In the past, the state Republican Party's able election lawyers have kept non-endorsed candidates off the ballot by invalidating entire petitions because of such mistakes.

Mr. Forbes has the resources to go to Federal court if there is an effort to keep him out of the race. Mr. McCain can't make the same boast. "There will be mistakes made," Mr. Molinari lamented. "The question is, will those mistakes be fatal?"

Mr. Forbes will probably be Mr. Bush's only opponent in many Congressional districts, no matter what happens. And he may get his wish to go head to head with Mr. Bush if Mr. McCain is kept out of the race. "This will be probably the only state where that's the case," Mr. Dal Col said.

So Mr. Forbes plans to make the most of it. He doesn't have any choice. In a recent Quinnipiac College poll, 56 percent of registered Republicans said they would vote for Mr. Bush in the primary. Mr. McCain was favored by 17 percent. Mr. Forbes came in a distant third with only 9 percent.

That could change in the coming weeks. Yet in the end, the conservative publisher may have to settle for a chance to influence the Texas governor by driving him to the right instead of letting him drift toward the mushy political center.

Robert Hornak, a Forbes delegate and president of the New York Young Republican Club, said the publisher's impact could still be felt if he could force Mr. Bush to adopt some of his fiscal policies, including his call for a flat tax. "People like me are supporting Forbes because we want to see the Forbes message be the predominant message in the Republican primary," Mr. Hornak said.

Michael McKeon, a spokesman for Mr. Pataki, declined to comment on whether the Governor thought Mr. McCain's petitions should be challenged. "We want to see a good campaign in New York with the candidates laying out their issues and the voters making their choices," Mr. McKeon said. "We believe that the choice ultimately will be George Bush."

"I'm not sure this is something that is even up for discussion in our office," said Mindy Tucker, a Bush campaign spokesman. "We are focused on getting Governor Bush's name on the ballot, not on what other candidates are doing."

However, it seems highly unlikely that Mr. McCain's paperwork would go unscrutinized. Indeed, Jeff Buley, general counsel for the Republican State Committee, told The Observer that he would be examining both Mr. McCain and Mr. Forbes' ballot petitions for the Bush campaign. "The Bush campaign has told us we are not automatically going to be going on an all-out offensive against these petitions," he said. "But we will be looking at them."

Actually, it would be a bit surprising if the party allowed either Mr. McCain and Mr. Forbes to descend on the state without some kind of election law challenge. After all, that's the way the political game has been played for decades in New York Republican circles. It might send the wrong signal to the party leadership's enemies. "Quite frankly," said New York Conservative Party chairman Michael Long, "it would be like leaving your front door open at night and putting a sign out that says, 'In case anybody wants to rob us, the door's open, O.K.?'"

For years, the system has worked to the state party's advantage. In 1988, the party bumped Mr. Dole off the ballot in a number of Congressional districts to help the elder George Bush, then the Vice President, take the state. But, of course, there were no hard feelings because eight years later, the party, led by former Senator Alfonse D'Amato, did the same for Mr. Dole. This time, Mr. Forbes and conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan were denied ballot access in a number of congressional districts. If that wasn't bad enough, some Forbes campaign workers were mugged when they tried to collect signatures.

Then something unexpected happened. Mr. Forbes dragged the state party into Federal court. He got himself back on the ballot along with Mr. Buchanan. And the two of them got a tremendous amount of favorable publicity. "They ended up making Steve look like a victim and they ended up making Pat Buchanan look sympathetic, if you can believe that," said Deroy Murdock, a libertarian columnist and communications consultant who is working with the Forbes campaign.

Editorialists as far away as Australia heaped scorn on the state G.O.P. machine. "In its heyday, Tammany Hall was a Democratic Party organization, controlling city and county politics in New York," wrote a correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald . "Elections weren't so much held as arranged. Such methods are being used, but by the Republican Party, in 1996. But Tammany Hall would have fixed it better."

Mr. D'Amato was so shaken that he apologized-but only after the election was over and Mr. Dole walked away with all 93 of New York's Republican delegates. "I was wrong," he told reporters. "Some people were annoyed at the fact that at one point it did appear there would be no competition."

As a result of this nightmarish public relations flap, Governor Pataki pushed through the recent election law reform bill. It may not do much for Mr. McCain. But Mr. Forbes can't be too unhappy. "Look, if Forbes puts forth the effort he did last time," Mr. Buley said, "he's going to qualify easily with these new numbers."

Perhaps the only thing Mr. Forbes should worry about now is the fallout that could occur if the state Republicans actually do try to keep Mr. McCain out of the race. The Senator may not have the money for a court battle. But his aides said any such effort to strong-arm Mr. McCain would seriously backfire.

"He is seen as a hero, this American hero," said Georgette Mosbacher, Mr. McCain's campaign co-chairman. "There will be people who say he has earned the right to allow people to vote for him because he put his life on the line for that freedom. So there could be a backlash."

If that happens, Mr. Pataki might be forced to do something really dramatic: scrap the state's onerous signature requirement altogether and simply ask candidates to pay a modest filing fee as many other states do. Imagine that!

Mr. Forbes would probably applaud. After all, it's too late to change things for this election. Then again, the wealthy publisher might find himself at a disadvantage next time he campaigns for President in New York.

That's old stuff these days. Now we cover campaigns as we cover the stock market. Get the money or forget about it. Even the opinion polls have been pushed aside for bar charts showing who has raised the most, who has spent the least, and so forth.

The money angle finds a way into every election story, as with this one in The Washington Post , ostensibly about Gee Dubbya Bush as a campaigner: "Candidate Bush is supremely confident, even cocky. On a recent afternoon he was calling signals at a football camp in Sacramento, Calif. 'Sixty-two,' he barked. 'Seventy-seven. Thirty-six-point-two-five.' The crowd broke up in laughter. The last number was a reference to the amount of money ($36.25 million) his campaign had just announced it had raised." In the old days the campaign managers used to come out from behind the curtains to trumpet that Boss So-and-So's organization had endorsed the candidate, thus assuring that his boy would carry Missouri. Not nowadays. They don't give a flying fig for endorsements and there are no organizations. The managers come out from behind the scenes to shout to the world that another couple of million have been deposited and that's why we're going to carry Colorado.

The minutiae of campaign money manipulation are the staple of political reportage. The other day, The New York Times had a piece explaining that Mr. Bush's expenditure of $43,500 for a strategically located place in the amphitheater where next month's Iowa's Republican straw poll would take place did not come from his hard-money campaign fund but from his soft-money campaign fund. (If you don't know the difference between hard and soft money, you don't vote so you needn't read any further into this screed.) Would that we had as clear a grasp of the meaning of Gee Dubbya's compassionate conservatism as we do of his fiscal shrewdness.

The same Times article carried a quote from one Keith Appell, described as a spokesman for Steve Forbes, who declared, "This [soft money expenditure] raises a serious question about how ethical a Bush Administration would be, especially when we know he's raised a gazillion dollars from Washington special-interest lobbyists." Don't you love it when the rich preach money morals? Not that we ought to put Gee Dubbya, who has a few coins in his jeans, in the category of the downtrodden poor, but it has been the Forbes tactic to watch his rivals ensnare themselves in the confining strictures of the Federal election laws and then outspend them. Gee Dubbya has stepped around that snare by refusing Federal matching funds and thereby reducing Mr. Forbes to carping about ethics.

Mr. Forbes evidently is rich enough to indulge in ethical poses on such topics as "Washington special interest lobbyists." There being no general interest lobbyists, who else is a politician to take money from?

As we are coming up on the quadrennium, Mr. Forbes is off his yacht and back on dry land, a candidate again. He hasn't done this quite often enough yet to be scored off as a rich crank but one or two more times and he will be food for Jay Leno. Yet each time he runs, the same set of questions offer themselves up. They are more pressing this time than last, because he has spent enough, long enough to be taken as a real political figure. Editorial writers listen to this man, who himself lays claim to but one accomplishment, to wit, arranging to have a very rich father. They've gotten used to the idea that this whack-a-doodle is a plausible public figure.

In the Jesse Ventura era, maybe he is. Nonetheless, compared to Steve Forbes, Hillary Clinton is a politician with a respectable record. Even next to Ross Perot, who, incidentally, really did have a respectable record before visions of conspiracies drove him slightly cuckoo, Mr. Forbes is a slow-witted, ordinary college-boy Republican. A formulaic plodder.

Other than his checkbook telling him he can afford to if he wants to, why does Steve Forbes keep running for President? It's not the same as John Adams and John Quincy Adams, not the same as Papa Bush and the shrubs, but one wonders if there is some kind of slightly bent motive concerning his father in Steve Forbes. Rather interesting, eh, wot? He was a nothing, a zero, a non-object until his sire died.

The father had a middling successful career as a New Jersey politician. He wanted to run for President himself, but, after getting skunked in a run for the Garden State's governorship, he became famous beyond New Jersey's borders as the flamboyant, not to say flaming, publisher-owner of the magazine founded by Steve Forbes' grandfather, Bertie. During all the years of Malcolm's glory, which grew more garish and somewhat scandalous as he slouched into old age, the boy Steve was invisible. He was, you might say, just hangin' out.

The guy did nothin'–zilch–as long as the old man was alive. The father dies and shaazzaam! The son bursts out of nowhere in an apparent psychic contest with his father's shade to buy greater fame and respect as a big-time Republican politician. No, more than that, Steve actually aims at fulfilling his father's ambition to live in the White House. Can money, which seems to be able to do everything else in politics, make this rich boy's psycho-fantasy dream come true?

Maybe, maybe not. It can assuredly get him back on television. He's on the air again with that mad gleam in his eye, flashing his goofy serial-killer smile which makes him look like a nightmare doll in a horror movie. Of course, if he does succeed in buying his way into office, it will be a horror movie because this boyo has no truck with compassionate conservatism. That puss of his is the self-satisfied face of a heartless reactionary.

He seems to have had some coaching on his public speaking since the last time he left the stable. He's a little smoother and his line has changed. In '96, he was running as some kind of Flat World Society libertarian, while this time he's gone over to the blue-nose crowd and is now content to see police power used to enforce private morals.

When all's said and done, Mr. Forbes may end up looking good with his inherited money. If he is able to buy the Republican nomination despite Gee Dubbya's best efforts at shaking the money tree, we could end up with a Gore-Forbes race or silver spoons versus filthy fingers. With Tony Coelho as his campaign chairman, Mr. Gore won't lack for money with or without the backing of Buddhist temple ladies. Never mind that if Mr. Gore wins, he and his chairman may go straight from the inauguration to the penitentiary.

We are a nation preoccupied by money and the system we have devised for picking our public officials suits us. The best movie is the one with the biggest box-office gross. The best book is the bestest seller. You wait and see–candidates will shortly be issuing I.P.O.'s for their campaigns. So, may the candidate with the most moola win.