Kemplore - presidential candidate Jack Kemp - Column

National Review, Feb 20, 1995 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

At this writing it is not known whether Jack Kemp will run for President. These words are not designed to give him, or the voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, authoritative advice on the question. They are intended to salute a wonder of the world, which is Jack Kemp's polemical gifts.

A few days ago I was exposed to him on four consecutive television programs, two of them dealing with the Federal Reserve Board's policies, the others with tax-reform proposals. Other panelists were distinguished analysts and there were many points of disagreement, but it isn't unfair to say that the preternatural enthusiasm of Jack Kemp for his positions and his quite extraordinary resourcefulness were the most memorable deposit of the four hours.

Presidential candidate Phil Gramm confided to a friend that Jack Kemp was wonderful, but there was this problem, that Kemp attached all his hopes to growth. He meant Kemp's soaring optimism about what would happen, most emphatically to the underclass, as a result of getting the government off the backs of its citizens. When asked to compare the merits of the Clinton tax plan, the Gephardt plan, the Gingrich and the Gramm plans, Kemp asked, Why were we not considering the Armey plan? The Armey plan is the flat-tax plan. Well, says Kemp, suggesting that he is embarrassed by his forthcoming capitulation to populist disposition, well, maybe we can't begin it at 17 per cent. But why not 18? Or even 19 per cent?

The Armey proposal would exempt a family of four earning $36,800 or less from paying any federal income tax. After that, everyone would pay 17 per cent. All other hedges and exemptions would disappear, whence "flat" tax. The revenue that would then accumulate would equal what is now brought in under a tax law that fills seven volumes with its regulations, exemptions, immunities, and complications. The advantages reach beyond the prospective joy of making out one's income-tax return on a single sheet of paper. The advantage, Kemp reminds us, is the disappearance of progressive rates of taxation, which have the effect of dulling enterprise and directing investment toward tax avoidance, rather than productivity.

It all sounds very much, one panelist observed, like supply-side economics.

Look, said Kemp eagerly, you were in favor of GATT, weren't you?

Well, yes, sure, of course.

Well, Lloyd Bentsen was Treasury secretary when the GATT vote came around, and he said, Lower the tariffs, and we will have more not less trade. And early figures confirm that. Well now, a tariff is a tax, isn't it? So here was Clinton's Treasury secretary saying, Lower that tax and revenues will increase. What's the difference between that tax and other taxes? If you believe in free trade, don't you believe in supply side on that front? Why is that sound thought but unsound thought on other fronts?

The night before, Kemp had been in Jerusalem. He reported on the hunger of young Israelis for relief from the heavy load of taxation. He visited, en route, with President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic. He had been asked whether that republic - enjoying a mounting prosperity, unlike its sister states with their sclerotic tax laws - would promulgate a capital-gains tax. Havel smiled and said to Kemp, No, he did not desire to imitate those practices of the United States which were bad. As for the Fed, it is wrong in imposing interest rates that will prevent economic energy from rising to a higher level.

Yes, he talks too much. What comes after a speech by Hubert Humphrey on Saturday night? Walter Mondale once quipped. "Sunday." At least as much can be said of Bill Clinton, the man who almost stopped the Democratic Convention in Atlanta in 1988 by his longwindedness. But when Kemp does it one isn't left with the feeling that megalomania is out running around the track. He communicates an enthusiasm for his enterprise which is nourished by hard application of his mind to the factual and theoretical bases of - freedom, no less. Jack Kemp is himself a wonderfully nourishing experience.