Missing Republican Jack Kemp Who Was Given a Medal of Freedom by President Obama
It Was 1992, and I was deciding whether to be a Republican or Democrat. I was opposed to the first Iraq war, but it was largely complete by then. The deficit loomed large due to the tax cutting excesses of the Reagan years, so I was not terribly upset that Bush had broke his promise not to raise taxes. Unlike today, everyone's goal was to be "mainstream." The goal was not to be seen as too extreme. On the Republican side, you had right of center Republicans like the first George Bush who had once dismissed Reagan's supply side ideology as "voodoo economics." On the Democratic side, Mario Cuomo declined to run due to immense popularity of Bush immediately following the Iraq war, so relative unknowns like Bill Clinton and Paul Tsongas through their hat in the ring, as well as California Governor Jerry Brown.
During those days, the one Republican voice that resonated with me was Jack Kemp. Kemp was clearly a conservative who believed in lower taxes and free enterprise, but unlike many Republicans, he was pro-immigration reform, and he was deeply interested in trying to address issues of urban poverty and race relations. He was a proponent of Enterprise Zones, which in California resembled the approach the State took with respect to redevelopment: tax cuts and incentives to lure redevelopment of depressed inner city areas. Redevelopment did not always work, and was sometimes abused, but one need only look at Emeryville, California or the area around the Staples in Los Angeles to see how Jack Kemp's ideas could work to address depressed economic areas.
I did not agree with a lot of what Jack Kemp stood for. But, I respected his goals and his heart seemed to be in the right place. Years later, when a young African American Senator was running for President, Jack Kemp rebuked a young Sean Hannity for trying to sensationalize Barack Obama's ties to the fiery Reverand Wright. After he died in 2009, President Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition his work on race.
I ultimately voted for President Clinton in the first Presidential Election that I ever voted in. I had envisioned that I would be non-partisan, and would be able to pick and choose between Democrats and Republicans with each trying to appeal to the "mainstream." However, it did not work out that way. Instead, over the years, Republicans have grown more and more extreme. At one time, John McCain was pro-immigration reform and supported efforts to address climate change. Now, not so much lest he be abandoned by the Republican base.
The biggest change I see is that today's Republican base no longer live in reality. Cocooned in Fox News, Rush Limbnaugh, Breitbart and Alex Jones, they have become detached from their fellow Americans and the issues that confront us all. As a result, there is more actual dialogue or common purpose. Now, on the right, you merely have a search for scapegoats. Now, on the right, you no longer have leaders like Jack Kemp who I might sincerely disagree with them respect to means, but knew that the ends he sought: reducing racial animus, empowering people in poverty, were noble.
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/28/magazine/how-jack-kemp-lost-the-war-on-poverty.html?pagewanted=all
THE WAR OVER THE WAR on Poverty was under way from the time that Bush invited Kemp to discuss taking the job of Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Kemp, a Bush rival in the 1988 Presidential primaries, had long held what most Republicans regarded as an eccentric interest in poverty. Meeting now with Bush and his inner circle, Kemp told them he wanted to "wage war on poverty."
Bush recoiled at the term, saying it conjured up the Great Society and Big Government. Kemp recalls arguing back that he had something different in mind, an activist agenda driven by markets, not bureaucracies. He said he wanted tenant ownership of public housing, "enterprise zones" that lured businesses to distressed areas through tax cuts and unspecified "radical welfare reform" that wouldn't punish the poor when they got a job.
The President had one caveat. "He didn't want me to call it a 'War on Poverty,' " Kemp said. Still, Kemp talked continually of the need to "wage war on poverty" from the moment he stood beside Bush to accept the Cabinet appointment.
Kemp suffered his first bureaucratic rout on June 23, 1989, when he visited the office of John Sununu, the White House chief of staff. He arrived with an inch-thick folder outlining his proposals -- not just enterprise zones but expanded subsidies for low-income renters, social services for the homeless and elderly, and tax changes to help first-time home buyers. His signature program was HOPE, the plan to sell public housing to tenants. Kemp wanted $1 billion for the program's first year.
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