BOB AND JACK TOGETHER
BARNES, FRED
Bob and Jack Together by Fred Barnes San Diego THE BEST IDEA TO EMERGE from the Republican convention is political synergy. Bob Dole and Jack Kemp campaign better together than apart: The whole...
...It’s like buying votes, he said...
...The last thing we need is two camps inside the campaign,” the aide said...
...Dole saw the quote and, naturally, was furious...
...He likes it, he understands it, he cares about it, he believes in it,” an adviser says...
...In the end, a compromise was reached...
...One aide proposed a campaign train trip by Dole and Kemp aboard the “Tax Cut Express...
...We believe the partial-birth abortion issue is important to many ethnic Catholics in the battleground states from Wisconsin and Illinois to Pennsylvania and New Jersey,” Reed says...
...There’s nobody he dislikes more,” says a Dole adviser...
...Dole soon became comfortable with a large tax cut...
...Kemp insisted on recruiting John Sears, a Washington lawyer who ran Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign for a while, as a top strategist...
...Nearly everyone in the Dole campaign agrees...
...True, Kemp is enormously grateful to Dole for plucking him from near-oblivion...
...Anyway, don’t jump to the conclusion that Dole and Kemp have integrated smoothly...
...Yet Kemp keeps Wanniski as an influential adviser...
...The Kemp writers blocked that...
...The vice-presidential candidate thought it would be demeaning to talk about the specific benefits of the Dole tax-cut plan...
...Many advisers, including campaign manager Scott Reed and policy chief Donald Rumsfeld, also agree that Clinton’s veto of the ban on partial-birth abortion should be used against him...
...When Kemp suggested providing the poor with capital, Sears’s draft said, “their derision reached its zenith...
...But maybe Kemp, as he hangs out with Dole, can change his mind...
...And they gave him what one called the “broad macro-thematics...
...But he can’t treat Dole as he would an old football buddy because of Dole’s World War II wound...
...So it’s small wonder that Dole and Kemp will continue making joint appearances between now and Labor Day...
...Kemp has been deferential, in public and private, but his entourage has still managed to irritate Dole...
...Dole spent many hours discussing the economic plan with his advisers...
...In his acceptance speech at the convention, he uttered the word “abortion” once, listing it as one of America’s moral diseases...
...He already had strong feelings about Wanniski, who last year tried to become a Dole adviser...
...And, with Dole looking over his shoulder, Kemp is under control and less verbose...
...The speech ended up considerably more eloquent than that, though there was another fight, this time between the speechwriters and Kemp...
...That would consist of special high-visibility events designed to be more attractive to the media than tedious speeches at the Democratic convention lionizing President Clinton...
...Further than that, he wouldn’t go...
...But once Dole’s economic experts discovered that the rollback tilted the benefits too much toward the rich, he suddenly substituted a 15 percent cut in individual tax rates...
...There’s one thing that binds Dole and Kemp closely: the tax cut proposed by Dole...
...The question is whether he can sell it to the public...
...And their emphasis on it will be frontloaded in September...
...On August 14, the day Dole officially won the presidential nomination, Wanniski was quoted in USA Today criticizing Dole...
...He knew a lot of details from his days as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee...
...There’s still a bit of awkwardness, though...
...Also, Jude Wanniski, the supplyside publicist, showed up at the GOP convention in San Diego to advise Kemp...
...Tax cuts will be the chief topic of a presidential candidate as never before...
...What’s surprising is that Dole has become so committed to his economic package, especially the tax reduction...
...Kemp is very physical, a hugger and backslapper...
...They may even attempt to upstage the Democratic convention, which meets in Chicago next week, through what one aide calls “counter-programming...
...Bob Dole and Jack Kemp campaign better together than apart: The whole turns out to be greater than the sum of the parts...
...Instead, Kemp would respond to “elitists” who have mocked his advocacy of tax cuts...
...A TV spot touting the tax cut begins August 19, but it was rushed into production before the Dole team had figured out how to keep the tax issue in the forefront of the campaign this fall...
...Dole and Kemp plan to devote half their time in the 10 weeks of the campaign to playing taxes up...
...One senior figure in the Dole campaign isn’t comfortable with the issue: Dole himself...
...Reagan played up a 30 percent across-the-board cut in 1980, but he had plenty of other issues on his agenda, notably restoring America’s standing in the world...
...They play off each other wonderfully,” gushes a Dole aide...
...Both had urged Kemp to run against Dole this year, first in the Republican primaries, then as the candidate of Ross Perot’s Reform party...
...The political calculation involved is simple: When the tax issue is the centerpiece of a campaign, Republicans usually win...
...Wanniski wanted Kemp to mention Charles Beard, the Marxist historian, and his notion of a “fluid society...
...And he and Dole have gotten along extraordinarily well in their lengthy meetings, strategy sessions, and meals...
...George Bush stressed cutting the tax on capital gains in 1988, but he relied more on pillorying Michael Dukakis as a liberal who allowed convicted criminals like Willie Horton to leave prison for weekend furloughs...
...Wanniski and Sears fought with Kemp’s writers over the acceptance speech Kemp delivered at the convention...
...And Ralph Reed, the head of the Christian Coalition, has urged the Dole campaign to raise that issue over and over...
...He stuck with the big cut even when its main element was changed two days before the package was unveiled on August 5. Dole had initially endorsed a rollback of the 1990 and 1993 tax hikes...
...Some Dole aides are dubious, fearing this tactic would make Dole look unpresidential...
...Reed shouldn’t get his hopes too far up...
...They still have a ways to go...
...Sears produced a draft in which Kemp did not refer to Dole at all...
...Dole draws energy from Kemp...
...One reason for keeping Dole and Kemp together for now, a Dole aide said, is so Kemp can learn to fit into the Dole campaign...
Vol. 1 • August 1996 • No. 48
