Jack Kemp: Courage and Intelligence

Bummer, when I was growing up he was an intelligent stalwart who used reason and compassion to win arguments.


From the Times:

Mr. Kemp was secretary of housing and urban development under the first President George Bush and the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 1996. But his greatest legacy may stem from his years as a congressman from Buffalo, especially 1978, when his argument for sharp tax cuts to promote economic growth became party policy, one that has endured to this day.

Mr. Kemp, having embraced a supply-side economic theory, told the House that year that the nation suffered under a “tax code that rewards consumption, leisure, debt and borrowing, and punishes savings, investment, work and production.”

Ronald Reagan adopted the issue as a central one in his 1980 presidential campaign, and in 1981 he won passage of a 23 percent cut over three years. The legislation was known as Kemp-Roth, named for Mr. Kemp and William V. Roth Jr., the Delaware Republican and his Senate co-sponsor.

Mr. Kemp’s other great cause, in his 18 years in the House and for three decades thereafter, was to get his party to seek more support from blacks and other minorities.

“The party of Lincoln,” he wrote after the 2008 election, “needs to rethink and revisit its historic roots as a party of emancipation, liberation, civil rights and equality of opportunity for all.”

Mr. Kemp won his House seat in 1970 because of his celebrity as an all-star quarterback for the Buffalo Bills, twice champions of the American Football League. He connected his concern for minorities with his respect for his black teammates, especially the linemen who had protected him from pass rushers.

Vin Weber, a former congressman from Minnesota and a close friend, said Mr. Kemp would often say, “I can’t help but care about the rights of the people I used to shower with.”


More, VIA HA:

Former VP candidate, Congressman, and conservative stalwart Jack Kemp died today at age 73:

Jack Kemp, the ex-quarterback, congressman, one-time vice-presidential nominee and self-described “bleeding-heart conservative” died Saturday.

His spokeswoman Bona Park and longtime friend and former campaign adviser Edwin J. Feulner confirmed that Kemp died after a lengthy illness.

Kemp had announced in January 2009 that he had been diagnosed with cancer. He said he was undergoing tests but gave no other detail.

Thank you, sir, for a life of service. Our prayers go out to his family for their loss.

Update: American Spectator on the importance of Jack Kemp, from January of this year:

“When you tax something you get less of it, and when you reward something you get more of it.”

With that simple exhortation — and this is a man born to exhort — Jack Kemp changed his party, changed his country and, ultimately, changed the world.

He had some help, of course. Ronald Reagan, notably. Robert Bartley and the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. The late Jude Wanniski, one-time member of the WSJ board and author of The Way the World Works. Arthur Laffer, he of the famous Laffer Curve. Others. A number of distinguished others.

Yet for an idea to revolutionize the way the world thinks and works, in the American system it helps if one holds elective or appointed office. Elected as a Congressman from the unlikely world-changing precincts of Buffalo, New York, where he had come to fame as the quarterback for the Buffalo Bills, Kemp evolved into the enthusiastic godfather of what became known as “Reaganomics.” or, in its other, equally familiar designation, “supply-side” economics.

Kemp had the courage to move beyond the usual issues for conservatives, choosing to work on poverty and housing issues, and challenging his fellow conservatives to make conservatism work across the board. It’s one of the reasons why Kemp will be missed.