MISSOURI COMMENTARY: LOOK AROUND; THERE'S NO ONE ELSE

It's crystal ball time. The Iowa caucuses are a week away and a week after that comes New Hampshire.

Anyway you slice it, Iowa is Dole country. It was Dole country when he ran against George Bush in 1988 and it's Dole country today. But it isn't Dole country by the landslide proportions he anticipated a couple of months ago. Steve Forbes has cut him up so badly that Dole has to play the farm subsidy card very heavily. There is something a bit incongruous about Dole the "Budget Cutter" in Washington and Dole the "Farm Subsidy Man" in Iowa. They call it politics.

The Forbes phenomenon is a combination of money to spare ($20 million spent so far) and a simple message. Money talks in American politics. The Supreme Court said as much in 1976 ago when it ruled out limitations on certain kinds of spending in federal elections. Money has shouted in Iowa and New Hampshire. Local commercial advertisers cannot broadcast their messages on the air -- Forbes has bought a virtual monopoly of the available air time and the other candidates have tried to catch up with lesser resources.

The Forbes message -- the flat tax -- fits on a bumper sticker. In politics, that's perfection. It has a superficial appeal and is working despite the fact that every other Republican candidates treats Forbes' version of the flat tax as absurd. Dole denounces it. Phil Gramm ridicules it. Lamar Alexander says it is "goofy." Pat Buchanan says it is "designed to help the boys down at the yacht club." All of them concoct some plan that they call a "flat tax," but with deductions, exemptions, taxation of dividends, and other things left over from the present system everyone decries.

Perhaps the cruelest cut of all to Forbes' flat tax is the attack on it by Mr. Flat Tax himself, House Minority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas. He says that "Forbes is out of date." The flat tax that Forbes is "selling was the 1994 model" and it is no longer in the sales room. Forbes "should do his homework and get current."

What has Armey upset is the picture of the Forbes the multi-millionaire being the national pitchman for the flat tax. Forbes is the only presidential candidate who refuses to release his federal income tax returns. He pretends that the flat tax is middle class America's best friend and refuses to show that he would be one of the nation's biggest beneficiaries.

The Forbes income tax return is more than an issue of idle curiosity. Polling data show that many average Americans believe that millionaires pay little or no taxes because of clever accounting. When it is shown the principal advocate of a flat tax is a huge, windfall beneficiary, it will help to undercut some of the popular support for the whole idea of a flat tax. That's what Armey worries about.

Iowa may be Dole country, but we can't for now say the same about New Hampshire. Voters there are smug, demanding, quirky and not too predictable. New Hampshire voters like to make presidential candidates miserable. They will torment Dole and, before it's over, they will torment Forbes.

Assuming that Iowa is in the bag for Dole, he can afford to lose New Hampshire simply because there is no one around as a viable alternative.

The Republican Party, a year ago deemed a certainty to recapture the presidency, cannot go into the fall campaign with Forbes as its nominee -- or Phil Gramm, the meanest man in politics -- or Pat Buchanan, the second coming of the "Know Nothing" nativists.

Lamar Alexander is presentable in public, but is not satisfactory to the components of the Republican right. Should the horror of horrors hit -- Dole losing in both Iowa and New Hampshire -- Alexander would be the only civilized alternative.

There isn't time for new entrants. Primaries come fast and furious after New Hampshire. There are 18 primaries and caucuses between February 24 and March 5. The notion of a Colin Powell or jack Kemp jumpstarting a presidential campaign after New Hampshire is just that -- a notion.

The Republican Party establishment has a big stake in Bob Dole. He may not be a dream candidate, but he's the best the party has on the playing field.

Bob Dole is to the Republican Party in the United States what John Major is to the Conservative Party in Britain. Each is a career politician operating at the margins of expectations. For each man's party, he represents all that remains.

~Tom Eagleton of St. Louis is a former U.S. senator from Missouri.