Jack Kemp Remembered

My memorial at em>The Week< opens thus:

The obituaries for Jack Kemp described him as a “former congressman” and “former cabinet secretary.” Just like Norman Mineta!

These descriptions were not inaccurate, of course, but they were hopelessly inadequate. Kemp was the sponsor of the Kemp-Roth tax cut that formed the basis of the Republican platform in 1980. He championed one after another of the tax reductions and reforms that constituted the most exciting portion of the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s. A visionary advocate of a Republican rainbow coalition of tomorrow, Kemp was the great hope of a generation of conservative activists, the true prince, the president who should have been: Adlai Stevenson and Eugene McCarthy and Mario Cuomo all rolled into one. That he got no further in American politics than Secretary of Housing and Urban Development says much about him—and about us.