Arranged marriage

There’s always been something quirkily admirable about Steve Forbes’ presidential bid. For six long years he slogged unblinking down the campaign trail, a television-dominated environment fundamentally hostile to this singularly untelegenic candidate. He spent $66 million of his personal fortune wooing the public and got a handful of delegates and a lot of ridicule for his time and money.

If Mr. Forbes’ accountant is shaking his head in dismay over this expensive and fruitless courtship, the financial backers of George W. Bush must be pounding theirs. The Texas governor has raised $70 million and spent in excess of $40 million. The return on that investment so far has been wins in two beauty contests, a 19-point thumping in New Hampshire and evaporating leads elsewhere.

Money in politics can buy influence, it can buy ads, buttons and bumper stickers. It can buy access. It cannot, however, buy love. It is increasingly clear that the hearts and minds of the voters are not for sale.

Republican voters have always had an independent streak, but this refusal to go along with party elders and wed Gov. Bush proves that Sen. John McCain isn’t the only insurgent the GOP has to worry about. Maybe it’s the Internet culture — the incessant drumbeat that the Web frees individuals from the Establishment’s filter of information and opinion. Maybe it’s that the Republican rank-and-file has a better memory than leadership — it wasn’t all that many years ago that Ronald Reagan was the populist insurgent the Republican elite viewed with alarm. This party is no stranger to wrenching change from the voting booth up.

So now the Bush camp is working furiously to assure donors it hasn’t committed what one fund-raiser calls “political malpractice” and to retool the candidate’s message. This retooling consists of a new slogan and an image makeover — the candidate who was entitled to the presidency because his dad said “my boy” would be good at it and because he had the backing of an overwhelming majority of the Republican majority in Congress is now the outsider itching for a fight with the powers that be in Washington.

The fundamental point the Bush campaign misses is that most voters pick presidents the way they pick spouses — it’s the overall person that evokes admiration and ignites passion, not the hair, the clothes, being handy with tools or making macaroni and cheese the way mom made it. And here’s a telling example of the overall persons the public sees: On one recent day on the campaign trail in South Carolina, Gov. Bush’s main event was a speech to business leaders on the importance of tort reform to protect them from all those annoying lawsuits the public’s always bringing; meanwhile, Sen. McCain was telling a group of senior citizens they ought to be able to take a part-time job without losing the benefits they earned through a lifetime of work.

No wonder so many voters are having second thoughts about who they want to marry.