Jack Kemp: Calling his own Signals
by Judy Bachrach
MAY 5, 2009 TAGS:
Had Jack Kemp won the hearts and votes of his fellow Republicans during his bid for the 1988 presidential nomination, the GOP of today would be a vastly different and very likely far more successful party. Kemp, a onetime congressman from Buffalo, N.Y., and a former Buffalo Bills quarterback of considerable skill, was everything the party he loved no longer is: inclusive, supportive of minority interests, libertarian in philosophy, egalitarian in nature. “I wasn’t here for Dr. King or Rosa Parks or John Lewis,” he once said in an era when most Republicans proclaimed little affection for any of the trilogy. “But I’m here now and I’m going to yell it from the rooftops.”
.jpg)
When he died of cancer at 73, there was quite simply no one to take his place.
Kemp wasn’t one of a kind: The quirky and individualistic Barry Goldwater, for whom he volunteered in 1964, was his ideological forerunner. Ronald Reagan, in whose Sacramento office Kemp once worked when Reagan was California’s governor, shared his famous passion for supply-side economics: a stratagem for eternal American prosperity that involved a radical cut in taxes and – somehow or other – a government both flush with cash and raring to spend it. But Kemp was unusual in one special way: He never sacrificed any of his personal beliefs, however sound or loony, for either expediency or personal advancement.
He was also, for a politician, unusually charitable and blunt about the opposition: “Sean, I can’t do this every night with you…. I don’t want to deal with ad hominem arguments,” an exasperated Kemp told the right-wing Sean Hannity a year ago when the Fox mouthpiece was excoriating the Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. “You know what? I agree with him! We have not done enough to democratize our capitalistic system!”
Born in Los Angeles to a middle-class owner of a trucking company and a mother who was a social worker, both Christian Scientists, Kemp grew up a classic jock: a kid who actually devoted an entire high school essay to the subject of the forward pass; a quarterback and a javelin-hurler at Occidental College where he majored in … phys ed. He married his college girlfriend, Joanne Main; they had four children – and two of his sons played professional football.
But beyond those early biographical details, nothing about Kemp was either simple or predictable. After college, he studied economics as a post-graduate. Then he pursued a football career, first for the Detroit Lions, then the Steelers, and subsequently – in 1960 – for the Chargers, whom he eventually led to a division title with 15 touchdowns in a season. In 1962, the Chargers lost him to Buffalo, where he dazzled fans, winning an MVP award.
There were other moments of glory as well: As founder and president of the AFL Players Association, Kemp endorsed the boycott of an all-star game in New Orleans by African American players. They had been refused entrance to the city’s nightclubs. It was Kemp who got the game moved to Houston instead. “I can’t help but care about the rights of the people I used to shower with,” he often remarked.
In the course of his career, there were other less enviable acquisitions as well: a crushed hand, a dozen concussions and two broken ankles.
“Pro football gave me a good perspective – when I entered the political arena, I had already been booed, cheered, cut, sold, traded and hung in effigy,” Kemp liked to boast. His football career also gave him, when he started campaigning in 1969 for the Buffalo congressional seat that would remain his for18 fruitful years, the invaluable boost of permanent celebrity. Pro-labor, school prayer and immigration reform and anti-abortion, he would remain firm and unwavering in all his beliefs: “A bleeding heart conservative,” as Kemp liked to refer to himself, who was also occasionally prophetic.
In 1978, for example, Kemp informed the House of Representatives that Americans were burdened with “a tax code that rewards consumption, leisure, debt and borrowing, and punishes savings, investment, work and production.”
One year later, he came up with a measure he believed would eliminate all these evils: the famous Kemp-Roth bill, which proposed a 23 percent tax reduction. After Reagan won the presidency, a huge cut was in fact enshrined into law during a time of massive government spending. There were those who proved most unhappy with Kemp’s solution to the nation’s ills. By the end of the decade the national debt had tripled to almost $2.7 trillion.
(On this subject, however, Kemp remained perpetually – indeed defiantly -- unrepentant: “A decade of unprecedented job creation, entrepreneurship and prosperity has vindicated our formula for economic growth,” he declared in 1991. “It still astounds me to recall the arrogance with which liberals attacked our proposal to lower taxes on workers and investors.”)
In 1989, it was none other than Kemp’s victorious rival for the presidency, George H.W. Bush, who transformed the seasoned congressman into his secretary of Housing and Urban Development – always a thankless job in a Republican administration. Kemp led the charge to create inner city “enterprise zones,” which, he suggested, would attract businesses through special tax breaks. That idea quickly bit the dust. He also proposed selling public housing apartments to the disadvantaged tenants themselves: a plan (originally launched with considerable success by the government of British prime minister Margaret Thatcher) that also found no favor with Kemp’s fellow Republicans.
Despite his unpopularity among ideologues, in 1996 Kemp was tapped by presidential aspirant Bob Dole to be his running mate. They weren’t an inspired duo. Dole was an old and tired candidate, no match for Bill Clinton. And Kemp carried considerable baggage: a previous national campaign during which, as far too many voters remembered, he had advocated a return to the gold standard; and a tendency, much like Vice President Joe Biden’s, to talk far too much and without restraint.
“Jack was totally unmanageable,” his old campaign consultant Ed Rollins once grumbled. “I call it the quarterback mentality. Quarterbacks always think they can make the big play….”
And why not? Often as not, the big play is just what they do best. Just what the fans need most.
--
Also by Judy Bachrach
(2).gif)
Yves Saint Laurent: Vive le Roi
Every woman who got dressed at any moment during the ’60s or ’70s wore Yves Saint Laurent – even if she never purchased a single thread from the great French couturier.
.gif)
Ask Judy, April 29
In Love with a widower, Terminal Depression and Bucking Dependency
--
In the words of Wonkette.com commentor, Jack Kemp "punks" Sean Hannity (at the 3:00 minute mark)
When he died of cancer at 73, there was quite simply no one to take his place.Kemp wasn’t one of a kind: The quirky and individualistic Barry Goldwater, for whom he volunteered in 1964, was his ideological forerunner. Ronald Reagan, in whose Sacramento office Kemp once worked when Reagan was California’s governor, shared his famous passion for supply-side economics: a stratagem for eternal American prosperity that involved a radical cut in taxes and – somehow or other – a government both flush with cash and raring to spend it. But Kemp was unusual in one special way: He never sacrificed any of his personal beliefs, however sound or loony, for either expediency or personal advancement.
He was also, for a politician, unusually charitable and blunt about the opposition: “Sean, I can’t do this every night with you…. I don’t want to deal with ad hominem arguments,” an exasperated Kemp told the right-wing Sean Hannity a year ago when the Fox mouthpiece was excoriating the Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. “You know what? I agree with him! We have not done enough to democratize our capitalistic system!”
Born in Los Angeles to a middle-class owner of a trucking company and a mother who was a social worker, both Christian Scientists, Kemp grew up a classic jock: a kid who actually devoted an entire high school essay to the subject of the forward pass; a quarterback and a javelin-hurler at Occidental College where he majored in … phys ed. He married his college girlfriend, Joanne Main; they had four children – and two of his sons played professional football.
But beyond those early biographical details, nothing about Kemp was either simple or predictable. After college, he studied economics as a post-graduate. Then he pursued a football career, first for the Detroit Lions, then the Steelers, and subsequently – in 1960 – for the Chargers, whom he eventually led to a division title with 15 touchdowns in a season. In 1962, the Chargers lost him to Buffalo, where he dazzled fans, winning an MVP award.
There were other moments of glory as well: As founder and president of the AFL Players Association, Kemp endorsed the boycott of an all-star game in New Orleans by African American players. They had been refused entrance to the city’s nightclubs. It was Kemp who got the game moved to Houston instead. “I can’t help but care about the rights of the people I used to shower with,” he often remarked.In the course of his career, there were other less enviable acquisitions as well: a crushed hand, a dozen concussions and two broken ankles.
“Pro football gave me a good perspective – when I entered the political arena, I had already been booed, cheered, cut, sold, traded and hung in effigy,” Kemp liked to boast. His football career also gave him, when he started campaigning in 1969 for the Buffalo congressional seat that would remain his for18 fruitful years, the invaluable boost of permanent celebrity. Pro-labor, school prayer and immigration reform and anti-abortion, he would remain firm and unwavering in all his beliefs: “A bleeding heart conservative,” as Kemp liked to refer to himself, who was also occasionally prophetic.
In 1978, for example, Kemp informed the House of Representatives that Americans were burdened with “a tax code that rewards consumption, leisure, debt and borrowing, and punishes savings, investment, work and production.”
One year later, he came up with a measure he believed would eliminate all these evils: the famous Kemp-Roth bill, which proposed a 23 percent tax reduction. After Reagan won the presidency, a huge cut was in fact enshrined into law during a time of massive government spending. There were those who proved most unhappy with Kemp’s solution to the nation’s ills. By the end of the decade the national debt had tripled to almost $2.7 trillion.
(On this subject, however, Kemp remained perpetually – indeed defiantly -- unrepentant: “A decade of unprecedented job creation, entrepreneurship and prosperity has vindicated our formula for economic growth,” he declared in 1991. “It still astounds me to recall the arrogance with which liberals attacked our proposal to lower taxes on workers and investors.”)
In 1989, it was none other than Kemp’s victorious rival for the presidency, George H.W. Bush, who transformed the seasoned congressman into his secretary of Housing and Urban Development – always a thankless job in a Republican administration. Kemp led the charge to create inner city “enterprise zones,” which, he suggested, would attract businesses through special tax breaks. That idea quickly bit the dust. He also proposed selling public housing apartments to the disadvantaged tenants themselves: a plan (originally launched with considerable success by the government of British prime minister Margaret Thatcher) that also found no favor with Kemp’s fellow Republicans.
Despite his unpopularity among ideologues, in 1996 Kemp was tapped by presidential aspirant Bob Dole to be his running mate. They weren’t an inspired duo. Dole was an old and tired candidate, no match for Bill Clinton. And Kemp carried considerable baggage: a previous national campaign during which, as far too many voters remembered, he had advocated a return to the gold standard; and a tendency, much like Vice President Joe Biden’s, to talk far too much and without restraint.“Jack was totally unmanageable,” his old campaign consultant Ed Rollins once grumbled. “I call it the quarterback mentality. Quarterbacks always think they can make the big play….”
And why not? Often as not, the big play is just what they do best. Just what the fans need most.
--
Also by Judy Bachrach
Yves Saint Laurent: Vive le RoiEvery woman who got dressed at any moment during the ’60s or ’70s wore Yves Saint Laurent – even if she never purchased a single thread from the great French couturier.
Ask Judy, April 29In Love with a widower, Terminal Depression and Bucking Dependency
--
In the words of Wonkette.com commentor, Jack Kemp "punks" Sean Hannity (at the 3:00 minute mark)
RELATED CONTENT
TO ADD A COMMENT, PLEASE FIRST SIGN IN OR REGISTER.
