Jack Kemp was a speaker in search of an audience. But unlike most of Washington, including the city’s journalists, Kemp had something important to say. He may have been embarrassed about his academic background–he was a physical education major at Occidental College in California–but the truth was he knew more about economics and what worked in the real world to create growth and jobs than almost anyone else in town.
Absent this, Kemp might have been just another garrulous, likeable Republican on Capitol Hill. But because he knew what he was talking about and events proved him to be correct, he was the most influential House member of the past half-century. Was there anyone in Congress who achieved more? I can’t think of anyone.
Here are the four things I give Kemp credit for:
2) Persuading Ronald Reagan to adopt a 30 percent reduction in individual income tax rates initially as the main domestic message of his campaign in 1980 and then as the top priority of his presidency.
3) Transforming Republicans from an effete country-club party into a broad-based party with appeal to middle and working class voters.
4) Making, along with Reagan, Republicans the optimistic, positive party of ideas.
That would be an impressive set of accomplishments for a president or a powerful senator. But Kemp managed this as a young House member in the 1970s who never rose to an official position of leadership in Congress. He did it by the power of relentless persuasion and the force of an overpowering personality.
Kemp, a California native, was elected from Buffalo, New York, after he retired from professional football as the quarterback of the Buffalo Bills. The year was 1970, not a particularly good one for Republicans.
He taught himself economics, mainly through reading, and became the champion of tax cuts. (Kemp also mastered the difficult subjects of monetary policy and international economics.) He collected a contentious group of free market economists, so-called supply siders, as advisers and began a crusade to slash tax rates. He was tireless. In 1978, then-Republican national chairman Bill Brock took up the cause, thanks to Kemp, and urged Republican candidates to campaign on the 30 percent tax cut. Many did and Republicans picked up House and Senate seats.
Kemp would have been the logical Republican presidential nominee in 1980, except for one thing. Ronald Reagan, the favorite of the conservative movement, was still around. So Kemp deferred to Reagan. At the GOP convention, his supporters sought to get Reagan to pick Kemp as his vice presidential running mate. But Reagan chose George H.W. Bush, who eight years later defeated Kemp for the 1988 nomination.
By then, Kemp’s most influential years were behind him, though he was still active as a proselytizer for tax cuts and for a Republican party with a populist streak. And he remained an enormously popular figure, not just among Republicans and conservatives.
There was a reason for his enduring appeal: Kemp was a good-hearted man who put his philosophy and his cause above personal ambition. His overriding concern was for others and for America.
Kemp died on Saturday at 73. He leaves a large family and a wife, Joanne, who has been enormously influential in her own way, conducting a weekly Bible study in their home for more than 30 years and leading an untold number of people to faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
