It seems every so often there’s some unfounded rumor that I’m considering seeking office — sometimes even the presidency! The problem is, I think I’m too honest, and perhaps too controversial, to be a politician. I always say it like it is, and I’m not sure that a politician can do that, although I might just be able to get away with it because people tend to like me. Honesty causes controversy, and therefore, despite all the polls that say I should run, I would probably not be a very successful politician.

So has Trump become less honest, or has he developed another strategy to capture the White House? While Trump fans will have to wait until December for Renaissance Books to publish his campaign book, “The America We Deserve,” in the meantime they can turn to his previous bestsellers for a taste of his political insight.

How, for instance, would Trump relate to such major trading partners as the Japanese? In “Comeback” he extols the virtue of the germ-free Japanese practice of bowing in greeting, but in his No. 1 New York Times bestseller, “The Art of the Deal,” Trump indulges in a favorite ’80s pastime — Japan-bashing. “They rarely smile and they are so serious that they don’t make business fun,” he writes. “Fortunately, they have a lot of money to spend, and they seem to like real estate.”

And would Trump reform the judicial system? You bet. In “Comeback,” Trump observes that the legal system has been abused, exacting hundreds of millions from American taxpayers. “The saddest part of all is that this problem should be easy to solve, and everybody, including the American Bar Association, knows exactly what I’m talking about. The simple answer is this: The loser pays all costs related to the case including, but in no way limited to, the legal fees of the winning party.”

And the women’s vote? What kinds of wooing words can we expect from Trump, who has named Oprah Winfrey as his vice-presidential candidate on his dream ticket? “There’s nothing I love more than women, but they’re really a lot different than they’re portrayed,” he writes in “Comeback.” “They are far worse than men, far more aggressive, and boy, can they be smart.”

In Trump’s opinion, only the press — more specifically, bad press — will motivate a politician. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from dealing with politicians over the years, it’s that the only thing guaranteed to force them into action is the press - or, more specifically, fear of the press,” he writes in “Deal.”

And if Trump’s exploratory campaign fizzles or if he decides against running, which of his opponents will earn his vote? “It’s a lot better to side with a winner than a loser,” he writes.

Coelho’s alleged ethical transgressions were publicized over the weekend by the Center for Public Integrity, one of the few nonprofit institutions in Washington that is actually nonpartisan as well. According to an audit by the State Department’s inspector general, Coelho badly abused his position as the U.S. commissioner general of the 1998 World Exposition in Lisbon, Portugal.

The former California congressman is specifically alleged to have given patronage jobs to his relatives and cronies, grabbed airline tickets that had been donated to the government for his personal use, hired a chauffeur-driven Mercedes limo with public money and mingled his personal business interests in Portugal with his duties as the Expo commissioner.

Assuming that those charges are accurate — and for the most part they remain undenied — Coehlo appears to have confused a position of public trust with his own private enrichment. For someone who departed Congress under a shadow involving his personal finances in 1989 to become a wealthy businessman and lobbyist, this isn’t exactly a shocking development.

Ironically, Coehlo’s wide-ranging corporate connections include a very lucrative directorship with Service Corporation International, the huge funeral conglomerate whose regulatory troubles in Texas have embroiled Gov. George W. Bush in an embarrassing lawsuit. Indeed, Coehlo has extensive business ties with Republicans, including several of Bush’s major contributors and advisors.

Although the State Department report on Coehlo’s alleged misconduct involves no criminal charges and may ultimately fade away, it became public only days after media consultant Eskew was forced to sever his connections with the tobacco lobby because of inquiries by a New York Times reporter.

Gore brushed these questions aside by insisting that voters don’t care about the character of his advisors, and he may be right about that. But he is fooling himself if he thinks that none of this matters. While he strives to present himself as the tribune of working families and the protector of the public interest, Gore’s campaign apparatus seems to represent the very forces he claims to oppose. The effects of this contradiction are corrosive over time.

Seeking to understand how he can recover some momentum this election season, Gore would do well to reflect on the 1992 campaign that first elevated him to the No. 2 job. The Clinton-Gore “war room” was not run by lobbyists or front men; the battle to defeat that George Bush was waged by a wily Louisiana populist and an idealistic young congressional staffer.

Leaving aside President Clinton’s own natural superiority on the stump, an important difference between that campaign and this one is the difference between James Carville and Tony Coelho, between George Stephanopoulos and Carter Eskew — a difference of substance and style. Whatever their faults, nobody could doubt that Carville and Stephanopoulos were dedicated to Democratic ideals — and whatever their virtues, there seems to be little doubt that Coehlo and Eskew have other fat fish to fry.

To the mechanical-minded, this may seem like a contrast of no consequence. After all, with an intelligent and highly qualified candidate like Gore, a determination to stay “on message” with Democratic fundamentals and a sufficient war chest, why should it matter who gives the orders?

It matters because, as Mario Cuomo once noted, a successful campaign is an exercise in poetry (as opposed to a competent government, which functions in prose). Cuomo’s eloquent observation is especially but not exclusively pertinent to Democrats, who usually must inspire more voters with less money than their Republican rivals.

The domination of a Democratic campaign by figures such as Coehlo and Eskew mutes that kind of inspiration with excessive caution. It’s true that Gore suffers from his own personal awkwardness as a candidate, but his campaign’s hesitation in responding to political opportunities and challenges has aggravated the feeling of ennui that now surrounds him.

In recent weeks, for example, Gore has forfeited at least two chances to stand up against the far right, and thus left his friends wondering what, if anything, he stands for.

When the authorities in Kansas declared their hostility to evolution, the vice president should have risen to the occasion with a major speech in defense of natural science, the Enlightenment and the separation of church and state. The devotees of creationism are not about to vote for him under any circumstances, so he had nothing to lose by doing the right thing. Instead what issued forth from his campaign office was mush, and Gore himself seemed to have nothing of consequence to say.

Another chance to stand up and deliver came when Pat Buchanan’s muddled opinions about the Allied war against Hitler made headlines. Buchanan ought to be an inviting target for any Democrat, but again Gore remained seated and silent. The task of defending Western civilization was left instead to Donald Trump.

In both instances, the cautious, corporatized Gore campaign let slip an opportunity to define the vice president as the leader of his party and the defender of democratic values.

Clearly, the vice president needs better advice. Unless he refreshes his organization with some new and daring leadership, he may well end up losing the nomination and watching his corporate handlers return to their usual occupation — making money.

Though the ARP is smaller than the Reform Party, with chapters in perhaps 20 states and ballot lines in none, it is a serious organization that primarily focuses on the issues rather than personalities.

Its platform, which has been developed through a process of ongoing deliberation, takes clear, specific stands on such topics as tax reform (move toward a graduated flat tax or a consumption tax), government spending (pay down the debt), immigration (tighten restrictions), political reform (term limits and public financing of elections) and trade (protection of labor rights and the environment).

And though its members are not currently part of the Reform Party, the two groups may reunite in the near future, making the ARP potentially a significant base for the more moderate voices in the whole Reform movement.

No doubt it was a desire to be seen as reaching out to these moderates (and to create some interference for Lowell Weicker, who had already agreed to keynote) that led Donald Trump to call the ARP’s convention planners the day before the meeting began and ask to be added to the agenda, via a live telephone hookup that he offered to pay for.

But while the phone connection was clear, and the hundred or so assembled ARP leaders were clearly pleased at the attention and the chance to grill a prospective candidate, the Donald couldn’t have played a worse hand.

“I am seriously looking at the Reform Party and the nomination,” Trump began. “A lot of people are saying that maybe Donald Trump is just promoting a book, but that is not why I am involved.”

“I am very comfortable with the Reform Party platform,” he declared. And then he started to grab both feet and insert them into his mouth, one at a time.

“I’m strongly in favor of a very deep tax cut for the working people of America.” People in the room started shaking their heads in bewilderment. If there is one thing all the various Reformers agree on, it is that paying down the national debt has to come before everything else, including tax cuts.

“Campaign finance needs an overhaul,” Trump went on. Charles Riggs, an ARP activist who has led the party’s thinking on political reform measures, asked for details. Does Trump support the McCain-Feingold bill banning soft money, or stronger measures being passed in the states creating full public financing systems? “I believe you should be able to help a candidate as much as possible,” Trump answered, after bragging that he may well be the country’s single biggest contributor to campaigns if you include the hundreds of thousands he’s given to state and municipal candidates.

How would Trump reduce corporate welfare? Nelisse Muga of San Diego asked. “I am a believer in corporations,” Trump answered. Someone murmured, “He is a corporation.” “Corporate welfare is a word I hate,” Trump continued. “I don’t think it’s a big factor.” (It didn’t help Trump that the group had earlier spent an hour listening to consumer advocate Ralph Nader on this very subject.)

How about moving toward a flat tax or a national sales tax? “We have a system that’s working pretty well, and big changes can do big harm,” Trump answered. There were more expressions of dismay from the audience.

What’s wrong with the two-party system, someone else wanted to know. “I don’t think anything is wrong with it,” Trump answered, “though having a viable third party is important.” Why was not clear.

The rest of Trump’s comments were equally vacuous. He promised to fix America’s trade deficit: “I do know something about negotiating.” How would he save Social Security and Medicare? “You have to put some money aside, call it rainy day money.” He refused to give any indication of who he would turn to for foreign policy advice: “We’d get the best people, the top talent.”

The verdict of many of the ARP leaders I spoke to after the teleconference ended was plain. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and he doesn’t know who we are,” said Kathleen Hopkins, the group’s communications director. “He killed himself with us,” said Charles Riggs. Rick Simon, a Reform Party candidate for George Brown’s old seat in Congress, said, “I thought Trump was a lot of bad answers and empty answers. On three of our core issues: reducing the debt, he didn’t care; campaign finance reform, he said he likes buying politicians; and corporate welfare, he said he doesn’t see a problem.”

So what did they think Trump was doing, arranging the teleconference and seeking their attention? “Being Trump,” said Muga.

A clear tip-off to the ARP’s real sympathies came in the special convention issue of its monthly newsletter, which featured a two-and-a-half page reprint of Bruce Shapiro’s article in Salon News touting a possible Weicker candidacy. The day after Trump bombed, Weicker got two standing ovations from the audience, and though the crowd didn’t applaud everything he said, it was clear that they had a solid and realistic sense that he was the best they were going to get.

This is clearly crunch time for the former Connecticut governor. Before he addressed the convention, he spent an hour with the ARP executive committee, reviewing the ballot access laws for all 50 states and weighing his options. In a handful of states, including California, the deadline for declaring any intentions is little more than a month away.

Dean Barkley, Ventura’s campaign chairman, had flown in from Minnesota to try to move Weicker closer to getting in the race. After meeting with him in private, Barkley told me, “It was definitely worthwhile for me to be here,” implying that Weicker was getting closer to a run. Tom D’Amore, Weicker’s longtime lieutenant, seemed to concur. “You could call that speech he just gave a trial stump speech, even though it wasn’t planned that way,” he told me. “I’ve never seen him this interested.”

Will Weicker give up the chance to relax, make good money, enjoy his seven children and seven grandchildren, all for what would be an uphill, if not quixotic, fight for the nomination of a party that can barely hold itself together? Will he risk his legacy of fighting the good fight — Watergate, health-care research, opposing the religious right, getting jailed to protest apartheid? These are subjects, he told the ARPers, that weigh heavily on his mind.

Still, Weicker laid out a respectable agenda for any national candidate, calling for federal funding to smooth out inequality in educational opportunity, a ban on concealed weapons and automatic firearms, debt reduction before tax cuts, new investments in poor children and in community health care — and specifically rejecting restrictions on choice, efforts to bring prayer into schools and gimmicks like term limits.

Personally, I wonder if there is enough edge to this package to attract the support of disaffected voters. Weicker is not a populist in most senses of the word, and while his commitment to using government to alleviate suffering and promote the general welfare is real, he makes no sweeping calls for change. Maybe, just maybe, his intense commitment to principle and to political independence per se would be enough to break through the political haze. That, plus an endorsement from the country’s only Reform governor?

“This is a very complex puzzle with a lot of moving parts,” says Weicker advisor D’Amore. “It needs some glue, and that’s a candidate.” He’s right. If Weicker decided to jump in, a lot of pieces would fall into place, and the tattered crowd of political independents now searching for an address not marked with a cross would have a home.

The Reform Party race would then become one pitting an organized minority — the Buchanan Brigades and their Perotbot allies — against a far less organized majority — the millions of political independents who are socially liberal. And while Buchanan would start with a big advantage, the election is still so fluid that anything could happen.

Which brings up the only funny political anecdote of the weekend, which came from Jack Gargan, the embattled chairman-elect of the Reform Party, who won the hearts of the press back in July with an acceptance speech that jokingly played on his fondness for pool, motorcycles and “the ladies.”

As the top representative of the party, he said, “Every chance I get to spread the Reform name, I say yes. So when I was invited a few weeks ago to a naturists’ meeting, I said yes, thinking that it had something to do with the environment.

“When I drove up, I saw it was a gated community, which should have told me something. Well, before I had driven in two blocks I knew: I was in a nudist colony!

“I was in a panic. As I parked my car at the meeting hall, right near the side entrance, I could hear the person at the mike already beginning my introduction. Well, I decided, when you’re in Rome, you do as the Romans do. Backstage, I quickly pulled off my clothes, and, in deference to my audience, strode out there as naked as a jaybird.

“Imagine how I felt when I saw that, in deference to me, they were all fully dressed.”

The conventioneers roared with laughter. Unlike Nader, Trump and Weicker, here’s a guy who really knows how to spin a yarn.

Gargan had this crowd in the palm of his hand. Somehow, after rocking everyone back in their chairs with his story he turned serious, and insisted to the audience that he would rebuild the Reform Party on a more democratic, grass-roots foundation come Jan. 1, when his term actually begins. Promising big changes, he called on them to come back home to Reform.

With their clothes on.

How can parents expect children to make the right decisions, to use
the N-word (no) when many parents can’t bring themselves to use it?
To her credit, Karbo gets it right when she says, “The baby boomers’
Achilles’ heel is that we need to be cool. We want to be mothers, but we
don’t want to be the mother, the one who says no.” Boomers need to get
over this silly obsession with being cool. Deal with it and move on.

The fact that Amber felt free to use the F-word in front of her
friend’s mother and then punctuate her statement with a graphic visual
aid says as much about the mother’s lack of presence as it does about
Amber’s substandard upbringing. All in all, it makes for sad commentary
on the state of the American family.

– Richard Morris

Eddie Haskell certainly could have been sure that
neither June Cleaver nor his own mother would ever have claimed to “use the
F-word as liberally as the hero in anything written by David Mamet” when the
kids aren’t around. I personally am lost past the initial shock that almost
universally today, otherwise well-bred, extremely classy professional career
women, in senior management positions no less, swear like longshoremen in
public. If today’s adult leaders can’t hold themselves to a higher standard
(and believe me, our kids know what we’re up to), how can we expect civilized
behavior from our kids?

– Robert Maistros

Ashburn, Va.

I don’t think Karen Karbo quite understood the dynamics happening at her
stepdaughter’s birthday party. Amber was flirting with you. It was
your “cool mom”
test. My guess is that she was trying to make you laugh, inviting you to be
more than a cake-serving, interloping stepmom. Study the comic timing of
the seemingly offhand remark — it popped out of her mouth just as you
plopped truffle cake on her plate! She offered up an icebreaker, and did
you flirt back (a shriek, some eye widening, a bit of laughter, for God’s
sake), thrilled at her audacity in using bad language just for you? No. You
ignored the brave child.

And you failed the cool mom test.

The only question lingering in my mind is: What would your mom have done at
the party? Sounds like she was way ahead of her time.

– Roz Hawley

D-I-V-O-R-C-E TV
BY JOYCE MILLMAN
(09/27/99)

Joyce Millman’s review of “Family Law” fascinated me; having watched the
premiere, I couldn’t help but wonder how a show with such a fundamentally
ludicrous premise — a husband-and-wife law firm on the splits, where one
spouse literally steals the entire firm (lock, stock and client list)
out from under the other’s nose, virtually overnight, without the wronged
party even having the tiniest whiff that something was amiss until she
walks into the freshly emptied room — ever made it on the air.

But apparently this was a mere device to usher in the real raison d’etre of
the show: the gleeful embrace of naked misandry writ as uplifting
empowerment. Can anyone imagine a network television program in 1999
with a male character hiring a divorce lawyer who promises not only to win,
but to leave the soon-to-be-ex broken and whimpering on the carpet?
Or hiring an attorney whose self-professed qualifications for the job are 1) “I hate
women”, and 2) “I play very dirty”?

It makes perfect sense, though, in the world of “Family Law,” since there are
no good men. Every male character is either malignant, sleazy or stupid,
or at the least weak and hopelessly confused. Even the male children are
faulted — when the 11-year-old son of the addict mother acts out in anger
at mom’s attempts to regain custody (after abandoning her children for her
habit) by leaving a rock of crack cocaine within temptation’s reach, he is accused of
being (gasp!) “childish.”

Indeed, the only “acceptable” males in the premiere episode are either
hunks to be ogled, or sources of much-needed cash. The lone male attorney
who is accepted into the ranks of the newly reconstituted firm of Holt &
Associates makes the cut because he is both — first mistaken for a beefy moving
man (and summarily ogled), then accepted, albeit grudgingly, because even
though he is a sleazy personal injury attorney who does commercials
advertising his services, the firm will get a bite of his sizeable, um,
billables.

The underlying message of the show isn’t even underlying: “Family Law”
announces in bold and certain terms that Men are Scum — except for the
ones we need for cash or sex. As a signpost of the popular Zeitgeist, it
sends a chilling message: Payback may be a bitch, guys, but wait till you
meet her lawyer.

– C. Spector

Nice married guys
BY J.M. FITZROY

(09/25/99)

Why “J.M. Fitzroy” — who lives and loves under another name — listened
to that pathetic loser for as long as she did amazes me. As a single
man, let’s just say I’m embarrassed for my half of the species.

– Erik Milstone

St. Petersburg, Fla.

Fitzroy states, “Married men have a fantastic ability,
better even than journalists, to detach themselves from
reality as if they were not participants in life.” On
finishing her story, I found this claim highly ironic.
I’d wager that it applies to her much more aptly than it
does to most married men, particularly when she is not
acting as a journalist. Rationalization, projection,
self-denial: She needs to reread that article and focus
those psychoanalytical tactics on herself (objectively this
time). At least one of us has learned something indeed.

– Michael W. Anderson

Alameda, Calif.

Internet icons on parade?
BY JANELLE BROWN

(09/24/99)

Sure, maybe “a lot more kids will know who Jeeves is” after the Macy’s
Thanksgiving Day Parade — but if Janelle Brown’s article is any indication,
they will remain unacquainted with the stalwart butler’s creator, the
British writer P.G. Wodehouse, and his hilarious evocations of 1920s
upper-crust Britain. This is unfortunate, since Wodehouse’s Jeeves stories,
many written during the first third of this century, stand as
masterful examples of the use of the English language in comic writing and,
as such, transcend their era. For anyone who can appreciate the idea of
highbrow (or maybe just “arched brow”) literature laced with howl-inducing
farce, I advise the immediate acquisition of “Right Ho, Jeeves.” See if it
isn’t one of the funniest books you’ve ever read, and see if you do not
return to it and the other Jeeves stories again and again.

– John Mason

Austin, Texas

Is this what we are to expect of the cyber age: the rapid oblivion of the
culture of the printed word? Janelle Brown should at least do her homework. Even the
inimitable Reginald Jeeves can be found on the Internet.

– Mark Stoll

Lubbock, Texas

Maslin bails, critics rail
BY SEAN ELDER

(09/23/99)

I am sad to hear Janet Maslin is leaving the Times.
When I read a movie review, I want three things: some prediction of whether I
will enjoy the movie being reviewed, guideposts by which to interpret and
respond to the movie and good, intelligent writing. In my experience, only
the New York Times provides all of these; in fact, only the Times provides
any of these. I really appreciate Maslin’s willingness to judge a movie in terms of
its own ambitions, and not by narrow snobbish or populist taste: If it’s an
art movie, does it succeed in pushing our boundaries and taking us to a place
we’ve never been? If it’s a big, dumb action movie, does it succeed in giving
us a rush and getting stuff blowed up good, real good? Naturally, there are
moments when I disagree with her taste (“Titanic” and “Face/Off” as two of the
top 10 films of 1997?), but I have found her reviews to be extremely
helpful and perceptive.

– Aaron Hertzmann

Buchanan, McCain go head-to-head
BY JAKE TAPPER

(09/24/99)

Jake Tapper, though in a distinct minority as a member of the Fourth
Estate willing to call Buchanan for the bigot he obviously is, could
easily have pointed out still more ironies. Though Nixon indeed thought
that Buchanan was a bit far out from reality on the race issue, it was
Nixon who sent his errand boy to “count the Jews at Justice,” and who
blew minority voters off with “They don’t vote for us anyway.” And it
was Buchanan who wrote the words dutifully read by the First Idiot in
that German cemetery: “The S.S. were victims, too.”

– Frank Smith

Bluff City, Kan.

Once again, Buchanan has shown himself to be a bully, a bigot and an
embarrassment. No sensible American should regard him as anything but a
joke. Unfortunately, there are enough of his type rattling around in the
body politic to make things scary. Sen. McCain has nothing to apologize
for. It is about time someone of his stature took on this loudmouthed
bigot. As for painting himself as a victim now — isn’t that always the case
when you call a bully’s bluff?

– Al Schlaf

Des Moines, Iowa

Political circus
BY MICAH L. SIFRY AND DOUG IRELAND

(09/25/99)

In Micah L. Sifry and Doug Ireland’s article, there are six different instances
where someone is speaking about Trump, or on his behalf, and in each case the source is
unnamed. The article included descriptors such as “one of the Donald’s
political consultants,” “a Trump advisor,” “a non-Washington counselor”
and “the top executive of one of Trump’s companies.” Why isn’t anyone
willing to speak on the record about their association with Trump? With so
many unnamed spokespersons, it leads me to wonder: Is “the Donald” running a one-man
campaign?

– Mike Tronnes

Minneapolis

Murky future for tax cuts
BY SARAH KEECH

(09/24/99)

At a time when Americans are finally realizing that the Social Security
program has been raped by past administrations and that the books
have been cooked by the Unified Budget Act, for the administration
to veto an across-the-board tax cut is unconscionable! The targeted tax
cuts that the administration is pushing does not grant relief to the right
people. As a late-40s baby boomer with no kids at home, I am a member
of the most highly taxed group of Americans, and Clinton’s tax proposal gives
this group no help. This group must try to make up the
shortfall for retirement years created by the abuse of SSA funds.. We will
probably be dependent on the government without some relief from excessive
taxation. I hope the plight of upper 40s empty nesters is examined more closely.

– Dave Atkins

Pleasant Hope, Mo.

If we leave the money in Washington,
that’s something like hiring rats to guard the cheese. The
thing to do is go for the flat tax with a generous standard
exemption, so that the people at the bottom get to keep their money.
If they can do it fast enough, Y2K will become a non-problem for
millions of people — and the IRS.

– Jerome C. Borden

Antelope, Calif.

Trump told USA Today on Friday that he’ll make his decision sometime in January, after his new book, “The America We Deserve,” is published. Is Trump’s flirtation with Reform more than a way of hyping his book and his businesses? There’s no question that Trump is, as a non-Washington counselor puts it, “seriously engaged” in exploring the presidential race. His political advisers tell us that they’re currently negotiating with three Nevada-based signature-collection firms to see what it would cost to get Trump on the ballot in the 29 states where Reform has no ballot line.

Richard Winger, the country’s leading expert on ballot access, says that the going rate is about $2 per signature for paid petition gatherers, and that it would take around 350,000 valid signatures to get Trump on those state ballots. Figure roughly a million dollars — chump change to Trump, and a bargain for the all the publicity he’d reap from a presidential bid. One of the Donald’s political consultants estimates that he’d have to spend $20 million to get the Reform nomination. That would mean a lavish, Rolls-Royce campaign designed to lure as many as possible of the 6.5 million casino customers in Trump’s database into the Reform party. “We’ve been polling them periodically for years, and they just love him” says a Trump adviser. “We did a huge market survey six months ago. He’s spent 25 years building this persona, and they like it.”

There has been speculation that Trump has so much debt that his creditors wouldn’t let him run. Not so, says the top executive of one of Trump’s companies. “The debt is all held by Trump’s publicly-traded company,” he says. “It’s about $1.8 billion, and it’s all in the form of high-yield bonds held by thousands of people who only care if their dividend checks don’t arrive. This year we had a gross income of over $300 million.” Moreover, Trump’s father Fred, who was worth over $1 billion himself, recently died and Trump’s share of the estate — which has to be whacked up among his three living siblings and the children of a deceased fourth — is probably worth at least $200 million. That, added to Trump’s already considerable personal liquidity, gives him more than enough to run without feeling any pinch.

Contrary to public perception, while Trump may be an electoral neophyte as a candidate he is not green to politics. As a young man, he joined the family real-estate business — a highly politicized enterprise, especially in New York. Trump, in effect, became the company bagman, handing out contributions to politicians in return for favorable treatment for the family’s holdings. He’s been an equal-opportunity influence buyer, building his own empire in part by playing the pols like violins, ladling out the bucks to Democrats like Gov. Mario Cuomo and Mayor Ed Koch when they were in power, then switching with ease to Republicans George Pataki and Rudy Guiliani when they took office.

Like Reform presidential nominee Ross Perot before him, Trump’s entrie into the political arena may be motivated by personal disdain for other candidates. Both Perot and Buchanan are said to have long-standing rifts with the Bush clan. Trump is described by an advisor as having “a warm feeling for and cordial relationship” with George and Barbara Bush. Trump even threw a party at his New York apartment for Jeb Bush’s Florida gubernatorial campaign that netted $100,000. But the same source describes Trump as “not enamored” of either George W. or Al Gore. And Trump positively despises Bill Bradley. In a May Wall Street Journal op-ed piece attacking Dollar Bill, Trump wrote that Bradley’s success in eliminating a tax shelter for real-estate investments known as the “passive loss” in the 1986 Tax Reform Act “sent the real estate markets through the windshield — it was a hard time for developers like me.”

But will all this be enough to make a candidate out of The Donald? An outside-the-Beltway Trump consultant and golf partner says of his friend’s potential candidacy: “If you’re a guy who enjoys the public eye and enjoys the notoriety, why not? Every kid dreams of being president, and Donald is still really a kid. But I’m surprised he’s allowed it to go this far. He will never get into this race as just a spoiler. In golf, let’s say you’re on the green at the last hole and all you need to do is get down in two — tap the first putt to put it in. Donald doesn’t take that approach — he always goes for the win.”

If that’s so, then the odds against Trump’s running are doubly negative. He’d have to first fight Buchanan, who already has a substantial head start organizationally, and then take on the major-party candidates. And does Trump really want to endure nine months of insults from a bare-knuckles brawler like Buchanan? Already the Buchananites are cranking up their one-liners. Says wealthy former Reagan customs commissioner William von Raab: “It’s silly, isn’t it? When I hear his name I think of Taki’s crack, on hearing that he’d named his daughter Tiffany, that he’d probably name a son Rolex.”

Though Friday’s CNN poll shows Reforms favoring Buchanan 2-1 over Trump, the developer seems to be Jesse Ventura’s best hope of stopping Buchanan’s takeover of the Reform Party. Television’s talking lobotomies keep mentioning Warren Beatty as a possible anti-Buchanan horse. But Bill Hillsman, the populist media consultant who crafted Ventura’s winning gubernatorial ads, dismisses the notion. “My meeting with Warren was not at the request of Ventura,” Hillsman says, and underscores that “at no time has Warren, to my knowledge, thought about running as the candidate of the Reform Party” — a statement confirmed by members of Beatty’s unofficial “kitchen cabinet” of political advisors.

Ventura’s man Barkley says, “As we see the world today, the most likely candidates that Ventura would support are Lowell Weicker and Donald Trump.” But in talking up Weicker, the Venturans are clutching at straws. Weicker’s TV interviews since he returned from vacation have been passionless and schizophrenic about the Reform Party. Weicker’s former Connecticut campaign manager and closest political adviser, Tom D’Amore, now says that “if Buchanan wants the Reform nomination, nothing can stop it.”

Weicker is speaking next weekend to the minuscule American Reform Party, a tiny coterie of anti-Perot centrists who split from Reform over Perot’s authoritarian antics, but which has no money at all and is not on the ballot in a single state. While conceding that Ayatollah Pat might get Weicker’s fires burning in opposition, D’Amore wonders: “Is Weicker that interested in the Reform Party and building it? I don’t know.” He adds, “I sure as hell don’t want to have anything to do with the Reform Party if Buchanan is in it.”

For the last week Buchanan has been privately telling people that the only thing holding up the announcement of his Reform candidacy is an advisory opinion from the Federal Election Commission about money. The Buchanan camp says they can have FEC matching funds — for the money Pat has already raised as a Republican — applied to his Reform bid.

The FEC says it has yet to receive a formal written request from Buchanan. It will come after his book tour ends. But based on conversations with agency staffers, the Buchananites appear confident of their legal position. There is always a possibility that Republican members of the highly-politicized commission could screw Buchanan, but a top Buchananite says even that wouldn’t keep Pat from going Reform: “It would simply add to Pat’s aura of martyrdom at the hands of the undemocratic Republican establishment, and give him another way to bash George Bush.”

Buchanan has been taking a terrific beating on TV for his new book, “A Republic, Not an Empire,” and the Bushies have been hoping that this pummeling might drive Buchanan out of the race altogether, or at least weaken his appeal to Reformers. While there is ample evidence of anti-Semitism in Buchanan’s past writings, it is hard to find in this new text. Buchanan is right when he says that TV’s chattering classes — who paint Pat as a “Hitler-lover who opposed World War II” — are somewhat distorting his book. But these darts are unlikely to deter support among most of his heavily Catholic foot soldiers, who will flood the Reform Party and drown its existing core of activists.

The attacks only fuel Buchanan’s legendary stubbornness and make it more certain that he’ll run, not less — if only to preserve his image for future column-and-TV employment. Buchanan himself sent out a rousing e-mail memo to the Brigades on Friday: “Reports are coming in here that giant chain book stores … may be pulling the book from the shelves … call your local book stores … and demand to know if they’re carrying it,” wrote Buchanan, adding “We are taking incoming, but are holding up fine: Ride to the sound of the Guns!”[sic] The controversy has only boosted the book’s sales.

Given how the working- and lumpen-middle classes who are Buchanan’s target constituencies in this race distrust the media, it’s less than evident that the little-screen poundings will have a significant effect on their receptivity to him. Indeed, a new ABC poll of 1,000 voters, taken as the book controversy was dominating the air waves, showed 15 percent of voters would “seriously consider” voting for Buchanan in a three-way race — up four points from the ABC poll five weeks earlier — including 17 percent of Republicans, 16 percent of Democrats and an impressive 24 percent of independents.

A number of pundits who haven’t done their homework keep insisting that Ventura might still run to block the Buchanan takeover. That’s nonsense. Ventura excoriated Republican gubernatorial candidate Norm Coleman in 1998 for seeking the post only a year after being elected mayor of St. Paul; running this time would make Ventura look like a hypocrite and tarnish his iconoclastic image. Any of Ventura’s designs on the White House focus on 2004.

Another media myth is that Ventura’s forces “took over” the Reform Party when Jack Gargan, the candidate for party chair he backed, was elected at the July Reform convention in Dearborn. In fact, the party is basically an empty shell, composed of 50 state parties that are little more than letterheads with no base, apart from a handful of exceptions like Minnesota and New York. “That’s true,” incoming party chair Jack Gargan told us this week, adding that the party’s rules mean “someone with either a lot of money or a big following could stuff the ballot process. We are not well-enough established. They could walk in and take us over, and [prior to January 1st] I can’t do a darn thing about it.”

Perot loyalists still control many of the state parties, and even the New York Times, in a front-page Friday story, has now confirmed what we reported in the Nation three weeks ago: Ross Perot and his Perotbots are supporting Buchanan. So is the close-knit network of activists paraded into the Reform Party by Lenora Fulani, ex-presidential candidate of the cultish racket formerly known as the New Alliance Party, and her puppeteer Fred Newman, the NAPers’ manipulative guru. Add this support to the forthcoming inundation of the party by the Buchanan Brigades, and Buchanan’s emergence as the nominee of the Reform Party seems unstoppable.