He is that rare breed of interviewee whose deliberate replies could be printed in the raw with only cosmetic editing. Care for words aside, however - Mr Forbes regularly pens lengthy contributions for his magazine - the similarities between him and other journalists soon end. For starters, he is rich - a state few reporters attain, and then usually only after chucking in their first love and signing up with an investment bank.

He has also aspired to high political office, although he claims to no longer harbour such ambitions. One South China Morning Post business reporter who met Mr Forbes in passing a few years ago - they barely had time to exchange business cards - was surprised when she later received one of his books in the post, followed by regular Forbes family Christmas cards. The reporter's conclusion: 'I think he must be a very good networker.'

'Looking back at my past campaigns, I think you might say the message did better than the messenger,' said Mr Forbes, who last ran for the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 2000 only to be steamrolled by the George W. Bush bandwagon. 'Given the [financial] resources [Mr Bush] had, I figured we had to knock him out early or he would gain strength and there would be no stopping him. And that's why I focused on [the Iowa caucuses] - we came close but didn't quite beat him.'

It is impossible to separate Mr Forbes' wealth from his politics. He will forever be identified with his crusade for a flat tax - which in its purest form would tax school teachers, police officers and industrial magnates at the same rate - and much admires Hong Kong on that score.

'I'm delighted to hear [President Bush] and others talk about fundamental tax reform and simplification in his second term,' he said. 'On the tax front [Mr Bush] is doing very well. His people will admit the reason they came up with the tax-cut plan in the 2000 campaign was because of the pressure from my [flat-tax] proposal ... What's good for Hong Kong is good for the US.'

Mr Forbes occasionally lets slip a comment or two that suggests he has not totally forgotten or forgiven the man who buried his last presidential campaign in the fields of Iowa. He was asked, for example, about many liberals' crude, 'village idiot' caricatures of a president who benefits greatly from his opponents' tendency to under estimate him.

'Well before the [2000] campaign I realised that [Bush] as an individual does very well - when he applies himself to something,' he observed. 'You saw that at the acceptance speech at the convention. You saw that at the speech [before a joint session of the US Congress] after 9/11 ... so he has the mind. But it wasn't until his 40s that he became focused on public affairs. He wasn't involved before that.'

And perhaps it was Mr Forbes the journalist - rather than the would-be president - who was speaking when he appeared to rue 'among some of the Bushes including [the president's] father some gene to mangle the syntax of the English language.'

However, it is clear that Mr Forbes remains a loyal foot soldier in the Battle to Re-elect George Bush. From the US government's ballooning budge deficits to Iraq, he has at the ready an articulate defence of the president's policies.

His interviewer, for example, thought that although famous for being a low-tax, small-government advocate, Mr Forbes' fiscally conservative conscience might have a qualm or two about the president's large-scale tax cuts at a time of war and the resulting budget deficits. He is, however, impressed neither by the scale of tax cuts nor the deficits that have so far resulted.

According to former US treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, Vice-President Dick Cheney once snapped that 'deficits don't matter'. Mr Forbes appears to believe similarly, with the caveat that it is not the absolute size of Mr Bush's deficits that matter, but rather their size as a percentage of GDP.

'In terms of the deficit itself, compare it to the size of our economy and it's not that large. We've had proportionately higher deficits before in the 80s ... So the deficit per se doesn't worry me,' he said. '[Mr Bush's] first round of tax cuts had a lot of coverage and ballyhoo but were actually very weak and phased in over many years - the rebates were just one-off shots. They got it more right last year when they put cuts in income tax rates - not just a one-time rebate - and reduced tax rates on capital gains and dividends as well, which helps create capital investment.

'What we're spending on defence in proportion to our economy is half what it was under Ronald Reagan. The real cost is the blood cost. The lives are the real cost; the money is the least of it.'

That blood cost is a cost, Mr Forbes believes, that is worth paying: 'We have to fight the war on terror - no one is exempt from it. They are out to get us all, to change us all. And I prefer to live under a liberal democracy than under the Taleban.'

The Taleban, of course, governed Afghanistan, not Iraq, and Mr Forbes is quick to agree there was no 'direct' connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, their Taleban protectors and the events of September 11, 2001. 'We never said there was [a direct connection],' he argued. 'But in terms of networks of terrorists, terrorist figures working with Iraqi intelligence - that's irrefutable, that's out there.'

The Forbes Global CEO Conference opened with a debate between Richard Perle, reputed godfather to the civilian 'neo-conservative' faction in the Pentagon that pushed for the Iraq war, and Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor and Democratic presidential candidate. With Mr Forbes moderating, it seemed as if Mr Dean was outnumbered two to one on stage. 'Well, I wasn't a participant,' Mr Forbes protested. 'I was just putting the questions out there and letting them go at it.'

It was nonetheless clear that Mr Forbes is sympathetic with the neo-cons' world view. 'Saddam, as Perle made clear, had plenty of associations with terrorists,' he said. 'Terrorists did use Iraq as a sanctuary and now that sanctuary is gone ... One thing Perle said - the mistake we made in Iraq was that when Saddam was overthrown we should have turned the keys over to a group of Iraqis, particularly the opposition leaders who had opposed Saddam for a number of years. We never should have occupied Iraq.

'As for Iran,' he added, having been asked about its rather more advanced nuclear ambitions and whether the US had perhaps invaded the wrong country. 'We have not done what we should do. We have not supported enormous dissident forces in Iran, where there is huge opposition to the mullahs.'

Even if one disagrees with Mr Forbes on issues of war, peace and taxes, it is clear that he believes in the necessity of a Bush second term with the same conviction that others believe it would be disastrous. It is a stark reminder that the country's biggest divide is not between the 'two economic Americas', as Democratic vice-presidential nominee John Edwards argues, but the political divide between 'red' republicans and 'blue' democrats. Will the two never again meet?

As for Mr Forbes, it is unlikely he will return to the fray as a candidate again in 2008. Asked if he would run Mr Forbes replied: 'No, certainly not for the big one ... been there, tried that. I'm an agitator now.'

Biography

Malcolm Stevenson 'Steve' Forbes Jr, 57, is editor-in-chief, publisher and chief executive of Forbes magazine. A prominent conservative commentator, Mr Forbes ran for the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 1996 and again in 2000. He was in Hong Kong last month for the Forbes Global CEO Conference. A 1970 graduate of Princeton University, he is married with five daughters.