BURLINGAME, Calif.
In the 1980s, a hotshot executive at Warner Brothers began a meeting with a director by breezily saying, ''So, Fred, tell me about yourself.'' Fred Zinnemann, possibly thinking about his three Academy Awards (for ''High Noon,'' ''From Here to Eternity,'' and ''A Man for All Seasons''), smiled and said to his young interrogator, ''You first.''
In this campaign season, when biography counts, Steve Forbes might cop an Oscar for most-improved orator, but the script of his biography declines after the opening credits. The most notable day in his life was July 18, 1947, the day he was born into a large fortune, the fortune that sustains his presidential campaign and freaks out his party's establishment.
Forbes is not the only candidate born lucky. George W. Bush, Al Gore, and John McCain are all sons of famous fathers. Bill Bradley inherited his tallness. But the Forbes fortune promises unseemly havoc in the GOP.
He arrived for a weekend parley of the California Republican Party having won only two elections in his life: the 1996 presidential primaries in Arizona and Delaware. That total, although two more than G. W. Bush has won, still does not prove that he offers anything more than a will with a wallet.
Forbes can credibly claim that he is ''the new leader of America's conservative movement.'' He is less preposterous than Gary Bauer, Alan Keyes, or the Reform Party's Pat Buchanan, Donald Trump, and Ross Perot. But Forbes shares the slapstick troupe's odd notion that the presidency is an entry-level job. He is also a history buff. I asked him to name a role model, any president with no major public-sector experience, or, except for Wendell Willkie in 1940, any nominee who had never been on a public payroll.
''There has been no correlation between the extent of your experience and the performance in office,'' he said. ''A classic case is James Buchanan, our 15th president, who had a fantastically long resume and who in the eyes of most historians was the worst president we ever had. By contrast, his successor, Lincoln, our 16th president, had only two years a decade before in Congress and a few years before that in the Illinois Legislature.''
But other good presidents had long public careers, including Jefferson, Polk, Cleveland, two Adamses, and two Roosevelts. Forbes countered with one from his own state, ''one who had one of the least was Wilson. He had just one year as governor.'' Yet Forbes has ignored his party's pleas to run for governor or US senator from New Jersey.
The Forbes strategy depends on an early KO of Bush or McCain, leaving the magazine heir and his bankroll ready for a showdown. ''This is now a wide-open race. There is no front-runner anymore. The field is open,'' he told reporters here. ''We are in for the duration. We're going to have a real contest, and I'm the one true conservative in this race. I've got to get that message across.... This is going to be fought week by week and state by state.''
The reaction to him resembles the plot of a Jane Austen novel. Like anxious aunts worried about an inheritance, the Bush camp clucks, not for attribution, about his family. You have delighted us long enough, Steve, the sources suggest, hinting that he has stiffed his five daughters by squandering $28 million so far on political consultants.
McCain, meanwhile, oozes senatorial courtesy, saying: ''My relations with Steve Forbes throughout this cammpaign have been excellent. Our involvement in the debate has been honorable and at a level I think most Republicans would be pleased with.''
Forbes has a clear message (a flat tax) and a strong belief in it, but he will inevitably revisit truths from the New Testament and the old Beatles. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man with no experience to buy the White House. Also, money can't buy you love.
Martin F. Nolan's column appears regularly in the Globe.
