Kristol on Kemp

KRISTOL: You know, just thinking about — Juan called him a football player, which reminds me of a story. Joanne Kemp, his wife, a wonderful woman, took one of the daughters, I think, to the Senate gallery, and Jack was giving a speech on economic policy. Someone sitting behind them, not knowing who they were, said, “What does that guy know about economics? He’s a football — he’s a football player.” And apparently — I don’t know if it was Judith or Jennifer — turned to the guy behind them and said, “My daddy wasn’t a football player. He was a quarterback.” WILLIAMS: Absolutely. KRISTOL: And he was — he was a quarterback for us conservatives. WALLACE: How important do you think he was in Reaganomics? I mean, how key a figure in everything that we associate with Reagan’s economic policy? KRISTOL: Absolutely crucial. He got there first on supply-side economics, on his sense of focused pro-growth economics. He persuaded Ronald Reagan to adopt that. Reagan had not talked about that in the ’76 campaign. By 1980, Reagan ran as apostle of pro-growth economics, not simply balancing the budget and austerity. It was absolutely decisive to the victory in ’80 and to the Republican Party for the next 25 years. WALLACE: And the final thing I want you to say, Bill — and we have less than a minute left — you were saying to me earlier in my office that as a young Republican, sort of like Laura was saying, in the Reagan administration, that he was much more accessible and somebody that you could — you felt you could have some contact with as opposed to Ronald Reagan, who was on this huge pedestal. KRISTOL: Right. I mean, for me in the ’70s — I’m older than Laura – – I mean, Kemp was sort of the — was the leader in Washington of conservatives and combined — and Laura was right about this — an aggressive conservatism with a kind of happy Democratic populism that made it possible to think that conservatives could be a governing majority.