Professional football, like politics, is a rugged sport that requires extraordinarily tough people like Jack Kemp. Before he ever got to Congress for the first of nine terms he served representing a blue-collar Buffalo district, Kemp once said he had already “been booed, cheered, cut, sold, traded, and hung in effigy.” Yet, his 11 seasons as a pro quarterback included leading the Buffalo Bills to American Football League championships in 1964 and 1965. Along the way, he suffered multiple injuries, helped form and lead a players union, and was named Most Valuable Player. It was perhaps not the background one expected of a man who in the ensuing years would become identified with a simple economic maxim that was a game-changer in American politics.
Ronald Reagan is remembered chiefly as the president whose tax rate cuts in 1981 ignited what became at that time the longest period of economic expansion in American history. But Reagan got the idea from Kemp, who, with Sen. William Roth, R-DE, had for several years been pushing the “Kemp-Roth” proposal to slash federal tax rates by a third. It was the legislative centerpiece of the supply-side school view that lower tax rates produced more growth across the whole economy, with a result that government revenues increased. Or, as Kemp tirelessly put it in the maxim that epitomized his view of politics – “a rising tide lifts all boats.”
Kemp was an incurable political optimist. As his long-time advisor and family friend Edwin J. Feulner of The Heritage Foundation told The Wall Street Journal over the weekend, Kemp believed “the idea that all conservatives really should regroup around and identify with is that this is not an exclusive club, freedom is for everybody.” Kemp believed devoutly that tax cuts and the economic growth they created benefitted minority communities most by creating new jobs and opportunities that liberated people from poverty. The same idea explained his ever-vigorous support of tax-free “enterprise zones” to lure entrepreneurs to invest in blighted neighborhoods, which led to his appointment as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President George H.W. Bush.
His last campaign came in 1996 as Republican Sen. Bob Dole’s vice-presidential running-mate. After that loss to President Bill Clinton, Kemp kept doing what he had always done – speaking with unbounded enthusiasm wherever people would listen to his message of hope and optimism for all Americans. Only a few months ago, word spread quietly that the end was near after doctors found inoperable cancer. And so Saturday evening, surrounded by a loving family and the prayers of countless friends and admirers, Jack Kemp’s tide came in on an eternally sunny shore. Rest in peace.
