While mourning a close friend, it’s interesting to hear what others have to say about him. As expected, the recent passing of Jack Kemp generated glowing tributes from commentators both right and left.
Yet some seem set on rewriting history.
Liberal Bob Herbert, for example, began his column in The New York Times by conceding that Kemp’s idea to grow the Republican Party was a good one. But, he wrote, “The bad idea, advanced by Kemp with fanatical energy and devotion, was supply-side economics -- ‘voodoo economics,’ as George H.W. Bush so famously and rightly derided it.” Herbert added of those inspired by Kemp, “Cut taxes, they argued, and watch the economy take off like a rocket.”
As history already shows, though, that is exactly what happened.
The Kemp-Roth tax cuts of 1981 laid the groundwork for President Reagan’s cuts in the early 1980s. By slashing rates, these cuts triggered more than 25 years of virtually uninterrupted economic growth -- just as similar supply-side cuts proposed by President Kennedy had worked decades earlier.
The first time I met Jack, in 1971, he was a freshman congressman and I was working for another member on Capitol Hill. I stopped by because I’d heard he understood economics and how the economy worked -- rare traits in any congressman, and ones to be nurtured as much as possible.
Amid the reports, files and newspapers piled on his desk, there were only two books. One was his Bible, “to keep my moral compass straight,” he said. The other was “The Constitution of Liberty” by Friedrich von Hayek, “to keep my freedom agenda straight.” He never veered from that freedom agenda, and he recognized a fundamental truth: Economic freedom and opportunity are good for everyone, not simply a select few.
In 1996, Jack asked me to take a leave-of-absence from my day job to join him on the campaign trail as he ran for vice president. Instead of hitting only the usual Republican hot beds, Kemp traveled to such locales as Watts, the Cabrini-Green housing project in Chicago and Harlem.
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