Kemp’s Mountain of Missed Opportunity

Two debates down, one to go. Bob Dole may yet persuade the American people to fire Bill Clinton, but this much is clear: He didn’t get much help from Jack Kemp last week in his thoughtful talkathon with Al Gore. What was billed as a preview of the 2000 presidential election may instead prove to be an indicator that, assuming Dole loses, Kemp may have a hard time keeping his head start on the GOP pack.

Kemp has been hammered by conservatives for failing to make the case for defeating the incumbent administration. Even on his signature issue, tax cuts, Kemp did not remind viewers that Clinton promised a “middle-class tax cut” in 1992 and then delivered a $270-billion increase in 1993. And that tax hike would have been even bigger if Gore’s “BTU” levy on energy consumption had been enacted.

Belatedly, Kemp has gotten tougher: In a weekend radio address, he scored the Clinton administration for its “half-truths” on everything from foreign affairs to Filegate. But his audience was perhaps 1% of what it was when he was on prime time. Kemp may want to focus on big ideas, but he should also know that politics is about comparing and then choosing. And it is legitimate for candidates to urge voters to examine not only their rival’s policy platforms but also their follow-through credibility.

That’s Dole’s biggest problem: Few voters believe his promises. According to a CBS poll, a whopping 63% of voters don’t think that if elected, Dole actually will cut taxes by 15%.

Kemp doesn’t have that to worry about. In his case, repetition is the surest indicator of his conviction: He has been saying the same thing for two decades. His first policy tome, “An American Renaissance,” published in 1979, with its relentless stress on across-the-board tax cuts, could have been his briefing book for Wednesday’s debate. So when Gore called for “targeted tax cuts,” Kemp was quick with a polished response: “They’ll give us a tax cut, but only if we do exactly what they want us to do. That isn’t America. That’s social engineering.”

Kemp seems blind to the notion that not every problem can be solved with a tax cut. When debate moderator Jim Lehrer asked him what the Roberto Alomar spitting incident revealed about “the American soul,” it took Kemp just 33 words to refocus the topic on the task of bringing “democratic capitalism” to both Eastern Europe and East L.A.

Kemp zeroed in on the Clinton administration’s implicit policy of benign neglect on urban issues. Calling for “a new civil rights agenda” of lower taxes, school choice and enterprise zones, he linked familiar Republican denunciations of burdensome bureaucrats with his desire to turn inner cities into new Hong Kongs.

Republican professionals dismiss Kemp’s ‘hood-to-barrio itinerary as media-mindful guilt-tripping, but if the GOP does lose this year, someone will have to state the obvious: that not enough Americans share the center-right political vision and that new voters will have to come from somewhere.

Kemp the economic evangelist would love to concentrate on spreading capitalism to the have-nots, at least in times of material prosperity. The energy inside the GOP has shifted elsewhere, to issues of cultural identity, such as immigration and affirmative action. Kemp has not been immune. In 1994, he campaigned against California’s Proposition 187; this year in San Diego, he retroactively endorsed it. Yet due in part to Kemp’s influence, the Dole campaign has not made an issue out of Proposition 209, the “California civil rights initiative.”

That’s a missed opportunity. Golden Staters may be happy enough with Clintonomics, but they know that Gore was wrong Wednesday when he credited affirmative action with “promoting harmony” between racial groups. Yet since Kemp’s rebuttal was a bland restatement of his own high-mindedness, the opportunity to tie Clinton to the unpopular affirmative action regime he supports was fumbled. If present polls prove true, next month a quarter of Californians will vote for Clinton and for Proposition 209, which Clinton opposes.

Kemp’s Reaganesque optimism is always appealing, but if he is going to survive the post-’96 bloodbath, he is going to have to remember that even the Gipper got tough when he had to.