Posted by
Bill Crawford on Wednesday, May 06, 2009 2:03:52 PM
Jack passed away last weekend, after battling cancer the same way he battled life. Jack was an eternal force of nature in the conservative movement.
Jack was a well read man. There is no way to overstate that. He was a voracious consumer of ideas. He was the primary individual responsible for introducing Arthur Laffer and supply side economics into American policy. He did this as a Congressman from New York, one of the young Republican lions who had Reagan's ear in the 1970's.
Jack had his down side- his Kemp-Roth tax cuts of 1981 (which we all still live under today) would not have passed without Reagan's political acumen. When Jack was the HUD Secretary in the Bush 41 administration, Chief of Staff Sununu and many others in the Cabinet used to make fun of him and his frank enthusiasm for ideas.
He was my hope for saving the hapless and hopeless Dole Presidential campaign in 1996. He walked on stage for the VP debate and Al Gore opened by congratulating him for being a conservative who was open to minorities and poor people. Instead of taking him to task for grossly mischaracterizing conservatism, as I would have done, Kemp let the insult to all of us stand with a simple "thank you". His enthusiasm often came at the expense of political wherwithal.
Nonetheless, his ideas were powerful, and his influence over policy as a Congressman circa 1981 was probably something not seen since the days of Daniel Webster. He was another example of how, while timing is everything in political history, sticking to your ideals can occasionally pay off in a big way.
The political insiders in the beltway used to roll their eyes at him the way the Parliament would roll their eyes at Winston Churchill in the early 1930's. Jack never gave a moment to prove himself sophisticated to the political class- he was too busy with his ideas.