Ideas! Optimism! Compassion!
Jack Kemp is a man of ideas.
Jack Kemp is compassionate, a self-described "bleeding-heart conservative."
Jack Kemp is optimistic. These are the three great strengths Kemp is said to
bring to the Republican ticket. And the downside? Judging from the media
coverage, Kemp's only problem is that he may be too good for the job: too
reasonable for his extreme-conservative party, too idealistic to get along with
the world-weary Bob Dole, too boyishly bumptious to sit quietly in second
place.
Kemp is neither a phony nor
a cynic. He is sincere, well-meaning, and impossible not to like. But he has
gotten an amazing free pass, since Dole chose him last week, on his three
alleged strengths.
Take his
so-called ideas. Kemp does, indeed, love ideas. But he loves them the way a
rare-book collector loves his leather volumes. He loves to acquire them, own
them, fondle them, display them--everything but open them up and read them.
Similarly, Kemp adds "ideas" to his collection--supply-side economics, the gold
standard, enterprise zones, school vouchers--then immediately puts them behind
glass. A real man of ideas loves to play with ideas. Kemp just loves to repeat
them.
It's laughably easy to get a reputation as a thinker in
Washington. At least Kemp, unlike the last man of ideas in American politics,
Gary Hart, does not posture as the chin-pulling philosopher. Indeed his
self-deprecating I'm-just-a-dumb-jock routine inoculates him against charges of
intellectual pretension. But Kemp will, for example, ostentatiously throw out
the full name of a 19 th -century French economist--"Jean Baptiste
Say"--as a way of implying, incorrectly, that he has more than the vaguest
notion of what Say's Law ("supply creates its own demand") is about--other than
knowing that it includes the magic word "supply." Reporters are impressed. And
if they aren't completely buffaloed, they still give Kemp points for effort and
obvious sincerity. Even an empty enthusiasm for ideas is appealing in a party
whose other leaders (Dole, Speaker Newt Gingrich, Chairman Haley Barbour) claim
not to have read their own platform.
Like the first names of dead
economists, the blizzard of statistics that blows through Kemp's oeuvre
of op-eds gives an impression of learning. But Jack Kemp is a propagandist, not
a thinker. One small example. In the New York Times last February,
arguing (surprise, surprise) that tax cuts will increase tax revenues, Kemp
wrote: "In the 1980s, taxes were lowered from a top marginal rate of 70 percent
to 28 percent. By the end of the decade, America's real gross domestic product
surged by 32 percent." A little math reveals that this "surge" implies average
annual GDP growth of 2.8 percent--not too different from the 2.5 percent growth
of recent years that Kemp claims is woefully inadequate. (And the difference,
as Jodie Allen pointed out in Slate a while
back can be fully accounted for by the ironic fact that government
spending--which is part of GDP--grew in the Reaganite '80s and is shrinking in
the Clintonite '90s.) Kemp's writings have no more inaccuracies, misleading
statistics, and fallacious arguments than those of most other politicians. But
a glaring internal contradiction is especially telling for a would-be man of
ideas: It suggests that you are not subjecting your own "ideas" to even the
minimal test of logical consistency.
What's
usually missing from Kemp's "ideas" is the intellectual discipline of
acknowledging that more of this means less of that. Regarding abortion, Kemp
says, "My premise is that both the mother--the woman--and the child--the
unborn--should have constitutional protections for life and freedom." It would
be lovely if a woman's freedom to choose didn't conflict with a fetus' claim on
life. But the notion that this can be arranged is a magic wish, not an
idea.
The same defect mars Kemp's "compassion."
Journalists seem to regard "bleeding-heart conservative" as a charming anomaly,
or a welcome melding of extremes into moderation, rather than as a mathematical
conundrum. Kemp is in favor of expensive programs for the poor. He also favors
giant tax cuts for the rich. And he opposes any cuts in middle-class
entitlements. It is a remarkable coincidence that none of Kemp's "ideas" for
helping the poor--which get him so much credit for being
"compassionate"--involves any effort or sacrifice by the affluent and the
middle class. Quite the contrary: They almost invariably involve tax breaks for
these groups. No doubt Kemp sincerely believes in the supply-side alchemy. And
no doubt his personal compassion for society's downtrodden is real. But as
public policy, cost-free compassion is worth about what it costs.
Which
brings us to "optimism." I, too, would be optimistic if I thought most of our
social problems could be solved by lower taxes for everyone, even lower taxes
for rich people, no taxes at all for residents of Washington, D.C. (yes, Kemp
has proposed a zero tax rate for K Street lawyers and Georgetown socialites),
and that the more you cut people's taxes, the more money will flood into the
federal treasury. But believing that requires more than a leap of faith: It
requires a leap of reason.
It's easy to be optimistic if you believe in the tooth
fairy. Kemp seems to think that those who refuse to leap with him actually
prefer pain, sacrifice, and "root-canal economics." And it's probably
true that psychological predisposition, as much as reason and intellect, leads
dour characters like Paul Tsongas (and--until the other day--Bob Dole) to be
preachers of sacrifice, while sunny characters like Jack Kemp become apologists
for alchemy. But it's silly to prize optimism for its own sake in a public
figure, irrespective of whether that optimism is justified. Indeed, unjustified
optimism is more dangerous than unjustified pessimism. Unless that is just a
dour predisposition talking.
The main reason the media
have greeted Jack Kemp so rapturously isn't his ideas, his optimism, or his
compassion. It is simple, dog-like gratitude for a reason to declare the
presidential race more interesting. And credit for that compassionate,
optimistic idea goes to cruel, brain-dead sourpuss Bob Dole. So, credit given.
Now, let's give Kemp the going-over he deserves.
Michael Kinsley is editor
of Slate.
