Fraser, Michigan
“What is capital?” Jack Kemp asks as he paces in shirt sleeves and wireless microphone before a crowd of factory workers. It is the morning after Labor Day, and the Republican nominee for vice president is on the floor of ISI Automation, a robotics manufacturing plant in Macomb County, Mich., trying hard to explain Bob Dole’s economic plan to the hundred or so employees assembled. It’s not clear that the audience has understood his question, but Kemp answers it anyway. “This is capital,” he says meaningfully, pointing to his head. A look of incomprehension settles over the crowd. Some pull nervously on cigarettes, others shift their gaze to the floor. Just about everybody looks confused. But the candidate keeps going — indeed, quickens the pace of the lesson. Over the next ten minutes, Kemp gives short primers on supply-side economics (as he explains it, a concept first introduced by President Kennedy in 1962), the balance of world trade (the Northern Hemisphere, he says, is now “one big state”), and the relationship between management and labor (“The wage earner and the stockholder are the same person,” he explains, only at different points along life’s journey).
It is a speech Kemp could have delivered to enthusiastic applause at the Heritage Foundation, and probably has. Instead, this day his blue-collar audience stares blankly when he mentions “your capital investment” and becomes animated only when the talk turns — as it often does when Kemp speaks — to football. Jack Kemp has been giving a lot of speeches like this recently. Barnstorming through the industrial Midwest last week, Kemp assumed the role of the Dole campaign’s missionary to the Democrats, giving most of his speeches to crowds that were either largely unionized or black. Kemp’s willingness to bring his message to those who will not necessarily appreciate it is admirable, even daring. It is less certain whether such a strategy will win his ticket many votes this fall.
If nothing else, Kemp’s first two weeks on the stump have shown he is capable of keeping his rhetoric consistent with the official positions of the Dole campaign. As a speaker, Kemp tends to extemporaneous public musings on just about any subject — economics, world history, and sports, among others. In the days following his nomination, it was widely feared among campaign advisers that Kemp might suddenly “leave the reservation” during a speech and contradict Dole’s stated position on questions like immigration or affirmative action. At least some reporters following the campaign were assigned to Kemp for the purpose of being present when something like this happened, a beat referred to as the “death watch.”
So far, Kemp has cleaved to the party line. Yet it is a measure of the media’s expectations of him that when, during a recent speech in Montana, Kemp recommended eliminating inheritance taxes — a position not contained in Dole’s original economic plan — the offhand remark made it into a number of news stories. To reporters at the scene, it seemed evidence of Kemp’s disobedience. If it was, Dole covered it well. Within 24 hours, the presidential candidate reconciled the two messages, giving a speech that called for “estate tax reform.”
Kemp’s rhetorical discipline is heartening to Republican partisans but a source of discouragement to the press. A fractured campaign is more interesting to cover than a harmonious one. As Kemp reliably sticks to his boss’s message in public, news coverage of his appearances — free publicity the Dole campaign cannot thrive without — inevitably will drop off. According to a grumbling CNN producer assigned to the vice presidential nominee, “The networks have decided Kemp is part of the Dole story, so they’re only covering his soundbite of the day.”
Usually that soundbite has something to do with Bob Dole’s proposed 15 percent tax cut. Kemp’s primary assignment seems to be to give life to the campaign’s economic plan, particularly its tax reductions. Kemp is an effective spokesman for the plan, and it’s a good thing: Centering a campaign on a blueprint for economic reform, even one that includes a sizable tax cut, is not the easiest way to stir up crowds. At a large Labor Day rally for Dole in St. Louis, warm-up speaker Rep. Jim Talent looked out into the sea of ardent Republicans and announced, “We ought to have a banner that says “15 Percent.'” Talent’s remark was supposed to be inspiring. Yet the crowd seemed unsure of what the congressman was talking about, of whether he was boosting Dole or taking a swipe at Clinton — or perhaps even of what “15 Percent” referred to. Hardly anyone cheered.
Kemp’s job is to make crowds cheer for the tax cut. And he is well suited for it, because he has the ability to frame Dole’s economic ideas in ways that aren’t threatening to those wary of increasing the federal deficit. The standard criticism of Dole’s proposed tax reduction is that it panders to the electorate’s most selfish, acquisitive instincts. Yet in Kemp’s hands, the plan comes across as remarkably high-minded: He never promises his audiences wealth, only the opportunity to create it. The stories he tells from the stump — of the welfare mothers, undercapitalized entrepreneurs, and other ordinary Americans struggling against confiscatory tax rates — make the 15 percent cut sound like something Robin Hood thought up.
Kemp, in other words, has a fundamentally sound message and is good at delivering it. The only question is whether the right audiences are hearing it. On a swing through Chicago the other day, Kemp gave only one public speech, to a mostly black audience at the Abraham Lincoln Centre on the city’s South Side. Set in the shadows of the crumbing Ida Wells public housing project, the Centre is at ground zero of the Democratic base. Even Kemp, who sits on the board of Howard University and is naturally comfortable with black audiences, had to work to fit in, giving a soul handshake to a man in the crowd, adding a slight urban lilt to his voice, and generally doing his best to sound like just another black Republican supply-sider who happens to be white. At one point he referred to his wife, Joanne, as his son’s “mama. ”
More significant, Kemp tailored his message to the Republican-phobic audience, barely mentioning the R-word, and then only apologetically. “Don’t worry, it’s not a Republican idea,” he assured the crowd (a little dishonestly) when the topic of enterprise zones arose. Nor did Kemp mention Dole much during the speech. Instead he referred to his “good friend” Henry Cisneros (Clinton’s HUD secretary), his “very good and old friend” Kweisi Mfume (head of the NAACP), and a long list of other liberal Democrats he admires. Midway through his speech, Kemp even seemed to endorse racial preferences. “I’m for affirmative action,” he said, “if it is the type of government effort to remove the barriers to people taking part in the type of access to credit, capital, housing, ownership, marriages, jobs, and education that are absolutely essential.” Such a statement could be taken to mean just about anything. But spoken quickly — and coupled with the claim that his position on the subject has never “flipped” or “flopped” — Kemp’s words conveyed the impression he still endorses the sort of affirmative action the Democratic party favors.
Still, the crowd generally seemed nonplused by Kemp’s speech. Leaving the hall afterward, one spectator, a state representative from Chicago, gave his impressions: “I’m going to work my tail off to see that they [Republicans] get nothing in my district.” All of which raises the question: Does a campaign that is 20 points behind on Labor Day have time for appearances like this? True, there is a nobility — as well as a sound long-term strategy — in Kemp’s attempts to bring urban black voters into the Republican party. And there is a chance such efforts may convince some moderates not content with Clinton to back Bob Dole in the fall. But with two months of campaigning left, wouldn’t it be more effective to bring Kemp’s message directly to the voters he and Dole need to win in the immediate future: middle-class suburban women and their husbands?
Such thoughts have crossed the collective mind of the Dole campaign, and Kemp may soon find himself speaking before audiences whose votes he can realistically influence. Kemp also may find himself campaigning more often with Dole, who could use someone on the same stage to explain his economic program to audiences. In the meantime, Kemp soldiers on alone, apostle to the unconvertible.
For his first solo speech of the fall campaign, Kemp headed to Flint, Mich., where he spoke from the front porch of a house owned by Ed Goggins, a local man identified by campaign aides as “a worker,” and his wife, Kaygie. Goggins, as it turns out, is not exactly a proletarian: His house, a handsome, well- kept colonial, is in a relatively upscale neighborhood, strolling distance from the Mott estate, home of the legendary head of General Motors. But if Goggins isn’t an obvious member of the working class, many people in Flint are. More than half of the city’s residents are non-white, many are union members, most are Democrats. It’s not a town that has traditionally drawn many barnstorming Republicans. “I’ve never seen this before,” said a local television reporter as Kemp stepped to the podium.
Kemp’s speech went over well enough, but the real excitement began after it ended. A throng of neighbors ten deep surrounded Kemp, pushing forward, almost desperate to be near him. Reporters approached, wondering what caused the sudden enthusiasm. It turned out Kemp was signing footballs.
