In this era of astonishing divisiveness in politics and the general culture, Fox Nation graces us with a 78-minute documentary on a late politician of a far more generous spirit, the conservative congressman and idea man Jack Kemp.
The just released documentary, The Jack Kemp Playbook, narrated by Brit Hume, is a fond and timely look back at a man who never shrank from ideational political combat, but who never made it nasty and personal. Kemp, the great popularizer of supply-side economics and of market-based anti-poverty programs, responded to difficulties and crises not with an approach of divide-and-conquer, but of unite-and-transcend.
The documentary makes clear that Kemp’s reluctance to go for the jugular sometimes harmed his own political advancement, and perhaps inadequately served Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole when Kemp was Dole’s running mate in 1996, but also that Kemp’s boundless, winsome energy led to a remarkable series of policy successes. Numerous wise observers surely would join former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott in saying that among Republican elected officials of the past half-century, Kemp was second only to Ronald Reagan in importance for the conservative enterprise.
As a pusher of ideas, Kemp ultimately succeeded in catalyzing enactment of a remarkable array of policy initiatives: enterprise zones, urban homesteading, capital gains tax cuts, tenant management of public housing, welfare reform based on work incentives and pro-family provisions, housing tax credits and vouchers, school choice, health savings accounts, and of course his famous, eponymous, across-the-board personal-income tax cuts of 1981 and flatter-tax bill of 1986. Kemp also was a leader in advocating the “rollback” of Communism, especially in Latin America.
The Fox Nation video ably chronicles most of this, after beginning with a reminder of just what a superb professional football quarterback Kemp was before entering politics. It also gives a profound sense of Kemp’s innate and exuberant personal decency and goodwill. And, in some great footage appropriate for today’s series of protests-cum-riots, the documentary chronicles how Kemp briefly became the face of the elder Bush administration in the wake of the Rodney King riots of 1992.
Sure, Bush’s deployment of Kemp was a fig leaf to cover his administration’s three prior years of giving short shrift to Kemp’s anti-poverty agenda. Still, Kemp’s heart and unifying spirit were so clearly genuine that he absolutely did succeed in tamping down some of the race-based anger in California and indeed nationwide. Nobody thought Kemp’s visits to the recent riot zone actually solved the underlying problems, but he did make unhappy African Americans feel as if they were being heard at the highest levels of government.
Heard, and cared about. Kemp cooled passions and inspired a sense that we were part of one country, even if the country still suffered some iniquities, rather than that we were two endlessly warring camps.
Without putting the blame on any one person or side, any sentient observer can see that such a spirit, and such leadership, is lacking today. It’s fine to insist on law and order, but that insistence ought to be married to a commitment to constructive engagement and targeted reforms. Kemp offered reforms aplenty, quite specifically, along with the obvious commitment to pursuing them in practice.
“He was an impassioned advocate for his beliefs, but a man of civility and goodwill,” Hume told me. “His ideas worked in his day and would work again in ours. And so would his style.”
Do go online and watch The Jack Kemp Playbook. And then, perhaps, let’s start looking for leaders with Kemp’s joyously can-do spirit. Kemp’s substance and style should come into style again.
