HANDS ON, HANDS OFF: MANAGING THE BIG GUYS

THE MANAGER IS NOT THE MESSAGE, BUT PRESIDENTIAL campaigns often mirror their managers. Bill Dal Col, who runs the upstart Forbes campaign, makes decisions on the fly like the head of an entrepreneurial start-up. Scott Reed, who oversees the Dole campaign, supervises his forces like the CEO of a FORTUNE 500 company. Dal Col shadows his candidate like a Secret Service agent, huddling with Forbes to make hour-to-hour decisions. Reed talks by phone with Dole at least twice a day and consults his commanders by conference call. One is a hands-on operator; the other an arm's-length manager. "Bill wants to be aboard the space shuttle," says longtime Republican operative Bill Canary, who has worked closely with both men, "while Scott prefers to be at Mission Control."

In a sense, Reed and Dal Col are brothers fighting on opposite sides of the Civil War, for they have the same political pedigree. Both are the political progeny of Jack Kemp and come from the pro-growth, Big Tent wing of the Republican Party. Reed served as Kemp's chief of staff at the Department of Housing and Urban Development from 1989 until '91, and Dal Col was Reed's handpicked successor. "We were a phenomenal team," recalls Dal Col. "He was Mr. Inside, and I was Mr. Outside." The two have kept a cordial distance, but the rivalry turned poisonous last week as Dal Col accused Reed's operation of mounting an anonymous phone campaign against Forbes.

In style, the two heads of this campaign's bitterest rivalry are not so much fire and ice as ice and ice. Businesslike but affable, Reed, 35, is efficiency personified. His desk is so meticulously organized that he can pinpoint an individual document in the stacks of neatly piled papers. Pale and intense, Dal Col, 39, resembles a 15th century monk in a Renaissance painting. Yes, he too is efficient ("Both Scott and I make lists of lists," he says), but Dal Col is strung a little tighter. "He never loses his temper," Dal Col says of Reed. "I sometimes blow up." Reed is more wary; he would not talk about himself or his rival for this story.

The beginnings of both their political careers were serendipitous. While working as a wind-surfing instructor on the Delaware shore in the summer of 1980, Reed volunteered as a chauffeur for his neighbor, Representative Tom Evans. The Congressman got Reed his first Washington job: driving around a Republican National Committee bigwig who was distributing presidential cuff links to the faithful. Reed's political godfather was consultant Roger Stone, who saw his charge's talent as an organizer and engineered his rise to deputy regional political director for the Reagan-Bush re-election in 1984. Four years later Reed became a shining star in Jack Kemp's undistinguished presidential campaign and later Kemp's chief of staff. Next stop: the Republican National Committee, where he was executive director, leaving it in strong financial shape. The hallmarks of Reed's style are simple: organization, organization, organization.