Optimism, Thy Name Is Jack Kemp
It began with Dad’s truck in 1939.
Following his father’s lesson, Jack Kemp pulled off a leveraged buyout of optimism. He is an entrepreneur of good cheer, an arbitrageur of sunshine. If likability and enthusiasm were products, Jack Kemp Inc. would be atop the Fortune 500.
Politics is often called a game, but Kemp, a former professional quarterback, regards politics as a deadly serious endeavor with strict rules of honor. His only enemy is cynicism. He is the least programmed candidate in politics today. “I have a deal with my speech writers,” he says. “They write whatever they want and I say whatever I want.”
The “Happy Warrior” in American politics has usually been a Democrat, but next to Kemp, Ted Kennedy is a grouch, Al Smith acted the sourpuss and Hubert Humphrey was Oscar Levant.
Vice presidential candidates are supposed to slash foes with hatchet and scimitar, but Kemp wields the biggest megaphone on the field.
He’s a one-time physical education major who’s now “trying to teach Economics 101.” His fervor floods forth polysyllabically: “We are unabashedly, unashamedly, unambiguously pro-entrepreneurial capitalism.”
In the courtyard of Amgen, the biotech company here, Kemp misplaced his papers. Unruffled, he said: “I don’t even need notes. I’ve got this coming out of the marrow of my bones. I’ve been waiting a long time to say what I’m saying. Bob Dole gave me a chance to say it, and I’m going to say it from the heart, the marrow and fiber of my being.”
He marveled at the company’s growth from “just 6 or 7 employees” to more than 4,000 today, “an example of unleashing the entrepreneurial spirit in this country. It can work even better if we get the Food and Drug Administration off your back. The FDA should be your partner, not your adversary.”
Every audience in Kemp’s tour of his native California heard the tale of his father: “My dad was a truck driver. He then started by buying the truck, drove it himself, and in 1939 he called it the California Delivery Service. That’s optimism. He later had 13 trucks. Ladies and gentlemen, capitalism is not based on greed. It’s based on family. It’s not based on pessimism, it’s based on optimism.”
More remarkable than audience reaction is the fond enthusiasm that radiates from Kemp’s traveling troupe, an all-star cast of grizzled operatives from the Nixon and Reagan eras who volunteered to come aboard because they genuinely like Kemp. Dole’s entourage is slim on experience because he frequently fires advisers.
Optimism may be therapeutic. When Dole spoke by telephone to a crowd at Netscape, the software firm in Mountain View, Kemp told his running mate, “We got ‘em where we want ‘em, Bob. We’re going to carry California.” Public opinion polls show the Dole-Kemp team behind in the state by a bunch of touchdowns.
In a game noted for dirty plays, Kemp is a stern referee, a most zealous zebra. At a barbecue in Bakersfield, bastion of California’s Country & Western conservatives, his mention of Bill Clinton ignited a burst of booing. Kemp reached for a penalty flag.
“No booing, come on,” he said. “We don’t boo here. We boo at football games. I know. I’m an expert at getting booed. Bill Clinton and Al Gore are not our enemies, they’re our opponents. The greatest arena in the world is our democracy. We must carry on this debate with civility, respect, tolerance and ideas.”
His belief in ideas blithely transcends demographics. “We’re going to end the estate tax in the United States, from the San Joaquin Valley to Harlem in New York,” he proclaimed, even though neither neighborhood seems overcrowded with anxious heirs.
Kemp is a bumper sticker messiah who has stolen Democratic passion, but not policy. “Think Globally, Act Locally” is the murky liberal sentiment on Volvo wagons. Kemp offers a clear and strong rebuttal.
Amgen has moved only two products onto the biotech market in 11 years of research, but were it to clone Jack Kemp, America would be filled with bionic optimists.
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