Kemp on the Defensive
Jackson, Gordon
THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR VOL. 20, NO. 3 / MARCH 1987 Gordon Jackson KEMP ON THE DEFENSIVE Why is Jack having trouble locating his receivers? W by haven't conservatives united behind the candidacy...
...The case for Kemp as the obvious conservative standard bearer is compelling...
...The others, Wanniski claims, are only being sent out to "run a couple of laps around the track" with Kemp so the party can undergo a necessary process of issue fermentation...
...His have apparently blown open fault lines not only in the Republican party, but also in the less ideologically diffuse conservative movement...
...Candidate Kemp has a few minor defects to overcome, but far more of the blame for his failure to generate momentum must be attributed to the conservative "movement" itself, which has, to all appearances, been rendered factious and somewhat frivolous by access to power...
...The pressure to "look at revenues," as Dole puts it, will be nearly irresistible in the next few years...
...Kemp is right out front asking these questions, and laying his answers on the line...
...There is probably some envy aroused by the attention Kemp does get from the press, but, whatever the reason, several of his colleagues who are natural allies on the issues have been withholding their support...
...Candidate Kemp has a few minor defects to overcome, but far more of the blame for his failure to generate momentum must be attributed to the conservative "movement" itself, which has, to all appearances, been rendered factious and somewhat frivolous by access to power...
...He has a vision, and policy prescriptions in elaborate detail to realize it...
...Conservatives in Washington and New York no longer hide out under rocks...
...Kemp can deliver flag-waving stem winders to match any of Ronald Reagan's...
...Bush may swear allegiance now to what he once called "voodoo economics," but anyone who thinks he fully shares the President's conviction against raising taxes had best not bet the IRA on it...
...Kemp's colleagues do not always give him the benefit of the doubt...
...Surely just those activists one would expect to be on the Kemp bandwagon by now would total close to 20 percent of such polls and put Kemp within easy striking distance of Bush and ahead of candidates who have never found a constituency...
...That view is plausible...
...s we go to press, Pat Buchanan has just announced his intention not to run, the obvious implication being that he is deferring to the Kemp candidacy...
...o why, given all these apparent attractions for conservatives, can't he solidify a base of thoughtful activists...
...Despite seemingly sterling credentials in conservative circles, Kemp can't crack double figures in polls of Republican party members, trailing not only the Vice President but such lackluster performers in the 1980 primaries as Robert Dole and Howard Baker...
...And there is the blow dry factor: many who do recognize Kemp's name seem to associate it first with a hair dryer...
...Is monetary reform needed...
...Kemp's faith that this vast network of colliding egos will serve as the agent for transforming his ideas into political power seems quaintly naive, but there is hope that it is not entirely unjustified...
...The 1986 tax reform bill has thrown out several provisions of TEFRA, which was trumpeted at its passage as significant reform...
...Remarkably, Kemp has put himself in a position to contest the Democrats for the votes of organized labor and blacks, groups with which he has worked hard to develop strong ties...
...Part of the problem may have to do with the perception of Kemp's personality...
...economy by letting in everyone who wants to take a chance with economic freedom...
...Ronald Reagan was thebeneficiary of such a process...
...Perhaps this is due simply to the fact that most of these congressmen owe debts for campaign speeches to all the major candidates, and don't wish to alienate any of their benefactors sooner than they have to...
...Dole and Baker, consummate Capitol Hill denizens, have never been able to look beyond Congress's bottom line...
...in doing so, however, he needs to be careful not to appear insincere, after the fashion of a fraternity boy patronizing geeks who have wandered into the rush party...
...Gilder, for one, believes that promoting immigration is the critical imperative of our time, pointing out that one-half of all major technological innovation during the past twenty years has been accomplished by immigrants...
...He has been fighting to make the U.S...
...Allegiance to one's own little fiefdom seems to have supplanted the collegiality and coherence once characteristic of out-of-power conservatism...
...The austerity Republicans are altogether out of sympathy with Kemp's tax-cutting emphasis, but even conservatives who are not of the root canal persuasion find fault with him for what they see as a cavalier attitude toward cutting spending...
...Perhaps...
...Low key and avuncular, like a Reagan or Laxalt, Kemp isn't...
...The Buckley stamp of approval, ratified throughout the movement with more or less unanimity by 1978, carried Reagan through the tough early going...
...Dole and Baker, consummate Capitol Hill denizens, have never been able to look beyond Congress's bottom line...
...Kemp has made his appeal directly to conservative intellectuals and activists...
...If the answer to both is yes, and it says here it is, then Jack Kemp has framed the issues correctly for '88, and conservatives should fall in behind him just as Pat Buchanan apparently has done...
...Then, too, the movement has been diluted considerably since 1981 by all manner of ambitious boys and girls who migrate to Washington in search of the magical intoxicant, power...
...It may be that Jude Wanniski, Kemp's close confederate and early supply-side mentor, has been right in claiming all along that conservative support for Kemp has never been in doubt...
...Who better to shepherd it into the 1990s than its principal political progenitor...
...Gary Hart and Jimmy Carter, to take two recent examples of strong primary performers, scarcely showed up in polls in 1983 and 1975...
...The pressure to "look at revenues," as Dole puts it, will be nearly irresistible in the next few years...
...A nation beguiled by Ronald Reagan's Gordon Jackson is a writer living in Alexandria, Virginia...
...Pro-life activists who have worked closely with Kemp on this legislation are completely convinced that his commitment to the issue is genuine and deep...
...Why have conservatives been all ears whenever a Laxalt, Robertson, or Buchanan candidacy is mentioned...
...Friendships with the powerful and well-positioned now often exert at least as strong a pull as loyalty to ideas...
...That view plainly puts him at odds with the impulse always present within conservatism to preserve the status quo...
...W by haven't conservatives united behind the candidacy of Jack Kemp, who is both a pioneer of the Reagan Revolution and arguably the most legitimate heir to its leadership...
...Kemp appears best prepared of the Republicans for the general election, having spent years developing an alternative anti-poverty program that will defuse the compassion issue Democrats can be counted on to raise...
...He seems often tempted to radiate a little more brilliance than his audience appreciates...
...The case for Kemp as the obvious conservative standard bearer is compelling...
...In contending that Reaganomics has failed because the deficit is the sun of the economic solar system and that it presages disaster without a tax increase, Stockman reflects the conventional wisdom of Washington...
...Folks in Michigan, Iowa, and New Hampshire call him neighbor by now...
...Kemp chose not to run for senator or governor because he felt he could put together a national issue constituency and influence tax policy just as effectively, if not more so, from a safe seat in the House...
...In short: conservatives are paying insufficient attention to the issues because they're having too much fun basking in the sunlight of unaccustomed respectability...
...o Kemp is engaged in a battle of ideas, the outcome of which will determine the direction of conservatism into the twenty-first century...
...He has, however, been coming across lately as less cocky, and it should be remembered that he is a deeply religious man who often quotes approvingly the Chesterton maxim that one should be humble about his moral worth, but ferocious in advancing his beliefs—a prescription Reagan has always seemed to embody perfectly...
...Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus was pushing Buchanan 14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1987 Kemp is tiresome economic esoterica, whereas Buchanan quickens his pulse by talking about stopping Communism in Central America and thereby keeping illegal immigrants from flooding our borders...
...He sees no contradiction between his free market vision of a dynamic capitalism and policies that preserve vital traditions, institutions, and creeds...
...Kemp shares this expansive, inclusive view of American prosperity...
...If so, somebody's not paying attention...
...Many conservatives seem to be withholding judgment on these questions, or giving little weight to the judgment if it has been made...
...Pro-life activists who have worked closely with Kemp on this legislation are completely convinced that his commitment to the issue is genuine and deep...
...What's the verdict on the 1981 tax cuts...
...His speeches on the subject constitute some of the best peace-time political rhetoric of recent years...
...Obviously it is perplexing to anyone trying to figure out the conservative catechism for 1988 when the eminently respectable DoleStockman-Will faction endlessly repeats the sensible proposition that government must pay its bills...
...Is that a victory, and if so why isn't the author of those tax cuts, Jack Kemp, getting more credit...
...Among other possible nominees, Pete du Pont could probably be counted on to defend Reaganomics, but his supply-side pedigree doesn't compare to Kemp's...
...Personality, when Reagan launched his drive to the presidency he was depicted as the most wild-eyed of fever swamp reactionaries...
...The swaggering quarterback's confidence that inspired the Buffalo Bills is still there, but may no longer be a professional asset...
...Is the jury in on TEFRA, the 1982 tax increase against which Kemp waged a lonely battle...
...They set up shop as "pragmatists," and commence trashing policy initiatives for the sake of image and public relations...
...Not only would he hold the fort, he would set Sam Donaldson's head to spinning with marginal rates, commodity prices, and depreciation schedules...
...Kemp is afflicted also by a perception that he has too little fire in his belly for a run at the presidency...
...economy growth-oriented since shortly after Watergate...
...If anything, Kemp would probably take better advantage of the bully pulpit in this regard than Reagan has, since Kemp's beliefs are not merely visceral, but thoroughly intellectualized...
...Who better to shepherd it into the 1990s than its principal political progenitor...
...It never recedes, week after week, talk show after show...
...He is one of the chief congressional proponents of SDI, calling for deployment of existing technology as soon as it becomes possible...
...The situation is certainly not irredeemable, and in the Kemp camp is dismissed as merely a name recognition problem, easily overcome by an early primary victory...
...The Republicans currently running ahead of Kemp can almost certainly be counted on to succumb to that pressure, probably not unwillingly...
...One gets the impression that the clamor among conservatives for a Pat Buchanan, Paul Laxalt, or Pat Robertson to enter the race has something to do with a belief that Kemp has insufficient conviction about the social issues...
...His principal difficulty is that he is, as advertised, a candidate of new ideas, and new ideas can be explosive...
...W by haven't conservatives united behind the candidacy of Jack Kemp, who is both a pioneer of the Reagan Revolution and arguably the most legitimate heir to its leadership...
...Henry Hyde and Chris Smith have been as far out front as Kemp on anti-abortion measures in recent years...
...He has been a national figure, in the middle of important policy debates, for a decade...
...He is convinced that economic liberty is meaningless without spiritual regeneration and a strong moral infrastructure, and he makes the case powerfully...
...That view is plausible...
...Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus was pushing Buchanan 14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1987 hard to run, primarily because he believes Buchanan would be a much stronger and clearer voice on national security matters...
...Austerity Republicans, Democrats lusting for new spending programs, the prestige press, all join together in a chorus for higher taxes...
...He is frankly unconcerned about checking immigration...
...The flame of intellect burns too brightly within him, and the competitive instincts of his football days have been channeled into a keen zest for polemics...
...He is convinced that economic liberty is meaningless without spiritual regeneration and a strong moral infrastructure, and he makes the case powerfully...
...Is that a Kemp victory...
...He has been a national figure, in the middle of important policy debates, for a decade...
...free market rhetoric is probably unaware just how strong the inside-theBeltway consensus for raising taxes is...
...economy'afford to broaden their bases extensively...
...Surely just those activists one would expect to be on the Kemp bandwagon by now would total close to 20 percent of such polls and put Kemp within easy striking distance of Bush and ahead of candidates who have never found a constituency...
...Disagreement over fiscal policy is the main thing that distinguishes Kemp from Dole, whose voting record on other issues most conservatives would find admirable...
...It is George Gilder's opinion that Kemp has only one big problem—packaging his views into formulations that will play well on 30-second TV spots...
...Turning first to the bread and butter issue—how much bread and butter a taxpayer can preserve from government: Kemp is, of all the contenders, clearly the best prepared to hold the fort against Stockmanomics...
...The task of choosing a new political leader is the one now at hand...
...Those who think the presidency's bully pulpit should be employed extensively to articulate moral values should take a close look at the speeches Kemp delivers frequently to such groups as Concerned Women of America, Liberty Baptist College, and the National Right to Life Convention...
...A comment revealing this tension was made recently by Tom Ellis, director of Jesse Helms's Congressional Club, and as perhaps the country's most powerful political operative, one of the keepers of conservatism's seal...
...The charge rises from his failure ever to run for statewide office in New York and his delay in putting together a campaign organization...
...In the '86 campaign he delivered 512 speeches, collecting IOUs from 198 fellow politicos...
...What is odd, though, is that this bout is well past the fifteenth round, and almost no one has bothered to declare a winner, or even allot points...
...they're now in their white-tie-and-tails phase, delivering lavish testimonials to one another and hobnobbing with the titans...
...As Angela Bay Buchanan Jackson, Pat Buchanan's sister, puts it, Kemp is "waiting to be crowned" by conservatives...
...p ersonality problems, though, are only a small part of Kemp's dilemma...
...In Congress, only Reps...
...That faith presupposes an active, alert, and non-partisan conservative intellectual movement...
...Is the immediate development and deployment of strategic defense imperative...
...Even Kemp has been guilty of this, according to the New Republic's Fred Barnes, who believes Kemp must retool his agenda for '88 to address current concerns such as trade and farm problems...
...And word from Capitol Hill staffers has it that members of the Conservative Opportunity Society, a group of Republican congressmen who share Kemp's emphasis on generating ideas and are seen as his proteges, are all ready to come on board soon...
...In Congress, only Reps...
...The organization is in place, and headed byheavyweights such as Ed Rollins and Charles Black...
...But a Kemp candidacy has been a given for years...
...Specifically, Kemp has got hold of two notions that are proving divisive: that growth should be the lodestar of economic policy, and that people are a resource, not a drain on resources...
...16 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1987...
...One gets the impression that the clamor among conservatives for a Pat Buchanan, Paul Laxalt, or Pat Robertson to enter the race has something to do with a belief that Kemp has insufficient conviction about the social issues...
...Those who think the presidency's bully pulpit should be employed extensively to articulate moral values should take a close look at the speeches Kemp delivers frequently to such groups as Concerned Women of America, Liberty Baptist College, and the National Right to Life Convention...
...A less obvious battle has been joined between such conservatives as Kemp, Gilder, and the editorial writers of the Wall Street Journal—who argue that growth and prosperity are a consequence of getting motivated people into the economy, wherever they come from—and those conservatives who believe the wagons should be circled around the current economic configuration...
...A member of the Kissinger Commission, he has spoken strongly and often on behalf of the contras—again, apparently to deaf ears...
...Allegiance to one's own little fiefdom—a foundation, a publication, a single issue—seems to have supplanted the collegiality and coherence once characteristic of out-ofpower conservatism...
...A member of the Kissinger Commission, he has spoken strongly and often on behalf of the contras—again, apparently to deaf ears...
...The Republicans currently running ahead of Kemp can almost certainly be counted on to succumb to that pressure, probably not unwillingly...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1987 15 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR VOL...
...His view, of course, is that the private sector, with proper incentives in place, can outgrow government...
...K emp is also an obvious choice for the social conservatism constituency, but they don't seem to know it...
...Is a pro-family agenda a necessary concomitant of economic prosperity...
...Not only would he hold the fort, he would set Sam Donaldson's head to spinning with marginal rates, commodity prices, and depreciation schedules...
...But a Kemp candidacy has been a given for years...
...He is one of the chief congressional proponents of SDI, calling for deployment of existing technology as soon as it becomes possible...
...Kemp's populist instincts rundeep...
...Conservatism has more intellectual horsepower at its disposal than ever before...
...Henry Hyde and Chris Smith have been as far out front as Kemp on anti-abortion measures in recent years...
...Clearly, his difficulties go beyond name recognition...
...Gary Hart and Jimmy Carter, to take two recent examples of strong primary performers, scarcely showed up in polls in 1983 and 1975...
...If so, somebody's not paying attention...
...Issue fermentation, however, is exactly what doesn't appear to be happening now, though it certainly should be...
...Kemp usually needs at least half an hour to deploy his ideas, putting him at a disadvantage to darlings of the evening news such as the epigrammatic Dole...
...The withdrawal of Buchanan, the conservative's conservative, should provide a real boost...
...The fight between supply-siders, who look past government red ink to focus on how much of a claim on the economy's total resources governmentis making, and the austerity Republicans, who apparently believe the economy is deficit driven, has been well documented...
...The situation is certainly not irredeemable, and in the Kemp camp is dismissed as merely a name recognition problem, easily overcome by an early primary victory...
...The movement seems unprepared to render such a judgment this time around, and the apparent reason is some cause for concern...
...K emp is also an obvious choice for the social conservatism constituency, but they don't seem to know it...
...Bush may swear allegiance now to what he once called "voodoo economics," but anyone who thinks he fully shares the President's conviction against raising taxes had best not bet the IRA on it...
...The Reagan economic policy is viewed outside Washington as a success, but it is far from being completely in place...
...Turning first to the bread and butter issue—how much bread and butter a taxpayer can preserve from government: Kemp is, of all the contenders, clearly the best prepared to hold the fort against Stockmanomics...
...His speeches on the subject constitute some of the best peace-time political rhetoric of recent years...
...Can the Republican party and the U.S...
...Among other possible nominees, Pete du Pont could probably be counted on to defend Reaganomics, but his supply-side pedigree doesn't compare to Kemp's...
...2) Is conservatism, paradoxically, a dynamic, expanding movement that can not only subsume what's left of Great Society liberalism while meeting the needs of national security, but also forge a powerful new consensus that will dominate American politics for decades...
...They've locked in government revenues at the historic norm of around 19 percent while restoring incentives and giving rise to strong, noninflationary growth for over four years...
...The conservative catechism has perhaps been too little examined in recent years...
...It can be harnessed and made to pull in a single direction when a task is clearly identified...
...Though the media now serve him up as Mr...
...Austerity Republicans, Democrats lusting for new spending programs, the prestige press, all join together in a chorus for higher taxes...
...He has a vision, and policy prescriptions in elaborate detail to realize it...
...economy growth-oriented since shortly after Watergate...
...Is he right about taxes, or is David Stockman...
...He is also the best bet to keep the baby-boomer vote in the Republican camp, offering the pocketbook issues, a pro-family agenda targeted to young parents growing more conservative, and a JFK-like appeal to youthful idealism...
...Kemp also takes a consistently hard line against Soviet aggression...
...Can war on poverty be waged more effectively through a free market approach...
...Clearly, his difficulties go beyond name recognition...
...Some have lost their edge but not their egos...
...Is Kemp getting too little credit for tax reform itself, which, with its emphasis on low marginal rates, bears closest resemblance to Kemp-Kasten of all the early contending bills...
...but no one can accuse Kemp of not trying to fit the smaller issues into a grand scheme, a far-ranging vision...
...He wants to broaden the base not only of the Republican party by bringing in minorities and labor, but also of the U.S...
...He wants to make things easier on the little guy with an entrepreneurial vision, and really couldn't care a fig about what's good for General Motors...
...Despite seemingly sterling credentials in conservative circles, Kemp can't crack double figures in polls of Republican party members, trailing not only the Vice President but such lackluster performers in the 1980 primaries as Robert Dole and Howard Baker...
...The tax debate has been muted lately, but the differences among conservatives remain profound...
...Folks in Michigan, Iowa, and New Hampshire call him neighbor by now...
...Kemp also takes a consistently hard line against Soviet aggression...
...The Reagan economic policy is viewed outside Washington as a success, but it is far from being completely in place...
...In contending that Reaganomics has failed because the deficit is the sun of the economic solar system and that it presages disaster without a tax increase, Stockman reflects the conventional wisdom of Washington...
...It will be vindicated only if the columnists, opinion journals, think tanks, foundations, and Capitol Hill operatives mull over the issues, pass judgment on them, and declare a winner among the political advocates...
...Discussing a Pat Buchanan candidacy, Ellis said that all he hears from Kemp has been running hard for years...
...Though he is less argumentative than earlier in his congressional career and works tirelessly to forge bipartisan coalitions, he is nevertheless not regarded as the most collegial of congressmen...
...Even one of Kemp's clearest virtues, a wide-ranging intellect, can be seen as a personality defect at this point...
...This issue of "people protectionism," as Gregory Fossedal called it in the Wall Street Journal, may be a real sleeper in the race for the Republican nomination...
...If anything, Kemp would probably take better advantage of the bully pulpit in this regard than Reagan has, since Kemp's beliefs are not merely visceral, but thoroughly intellectualized...
...He has an almost mystical faith in the power of ideas, believing that if his prevail in the intellectual arena, inevitably he will prevail in the political arena...
...Kemp's is the mind in which Reaganomics coheres in all its particulars...
...He has been fighting to make the U.S...
...He is seen by some on the Hill as a maverick legislative entrepreneur who plays to the national press with his private agenda...
...free market rhetoric is probably unaware just how strong the inside-theBeltway consensus for raising taxes is...
...He sees no contradiction between his free market vision of a dynamic capitalism and policies that preserve vital traditions, institutions, and creeds...
...It never recedes, week after week, talk show after show...
...He is transparently intelligent and quite articulate, and appears rather well pleased with himself for it...
...Kemp's is the mind in which Reaganomics coheres in all its particulars...
...The field appears to be opening up to Kemp, as Laxalt doesn't seem interested and Robertson is bogged down with Hurricane Gloria, Jubilee Years, and his service record...
...There are two broad questions posed by the Kemp candidacy: (1) Has the Reagan reversal of fifty years of economic policy been a success, and if so does the logic of the new policy dictate that it be solidified at home and exported to the rest of the world...
...A nation beguiled by Ronald Reagan's Gordon Jackson is a writer living in Alexandria, Virginia...
...Kemp has been running hard for years...
...This accusation, though, almost certainly is groundless...
Vol. 20 • March 1987 • No. 3
