CAMPAIGN '96: KNOCK 'EM FLAT

THE FACT THAT STEVE Forbes finds himself on the cover of TIME magazine this week says a little bit about Steve Forbes and a lot about American politics. A dark-horse candidate usually has to win something, or lose by less than expected, before he can hope to insert himself into the national imagination. Forbes is not the first rich man with a Big Idea to try to enter American politics at the top; nor is this the first time the mainstream candidates have courted an electorate so eager to rebuke them. So why is he now in second place in four key primary and caucus states, surrounded by reporters wherever he goes, seeing his flat-tax gospel embraced by the other campaigns and generally making the rest of the candidates feel so queasy?

The gravitational pull that Forbes exerts on the race first became clear in an Iowa debate two weeks ago, when Bob Dole still held a commanding lead in the polls but the contenders all aimed their knives at Forbes instead. They had been campaigning in the state for more than a year, Forbes for about three months. "Each of them felt they had to attack me to be able to contest Dole," Forbes told Time's Michael Kramer. "It apparently never occurred to them that by focusing on me, they created inadvertently the thing they most wanted to avoid--a two-man race between me and Dole." By last week Forbes had climbed to 15%, according to a TIME/CNN nationwide poll of likely Republican voters, behind Dole's 40% but ahead of everyone else, and the size of his crowds had increased fivefold.

Forbes enjoys some advantages over his opponents, of which his personal fortune is only one. Most of the press corps, and the voters, are treating him gently, though that will change as the scrutiny increases. He is so awkward in person--the boy who won't ask the girl to dance at the prom--that voters who meet him think he can't be for real, and so conclude that he must be. Unlike Dole, he has a single, clear message--Mr. Flat Tax--shellacked onto his forehead. Unlike both Dole and Phil Gramm, he is not a member in good standing of the American government. And unlike any other Republican, including Newt Gingrich, Forbes can present himself as a true revolutionary.

In fact, his campaign owes a debt to Gingrich, who in 1994 did the most to convince people that the government had replaced the Soviets as their mortal enemy: it overtaxed its citizens, divided families, squandered the nation's resources and disseminated softheaded values. But a year after their declaration of war, Gingrich and Dole lie bloodied in the budget trenches, and the political climate is if anything more divisive, unpleasant and ineffective than at any time in memory. Pollsters find that voters are at once unsated and disgusted: if the Republicans have faltered, the resentment against Washington politicians remains more powerful than ever.

It is a measure of this impatience that Steve Forbes, as unlikely a jockey as we are ever likely to encounter this side of Churchill Downs, is trying to ride that discontent to the head of the G.O.P. presidential race. Whether he ever intended, or expected, to get as far as he has is uncertain. Even less clear is whether he has the staff, the steadiness and steel to switch from quirky joyrider to formidable contender.