More than anything, Jack Kemp delivers Bob Dole an opportunity to recast the image of the Republican Party in a more optimistic, tolerant light aimed at winning the presidential race in the nation’s vast political middle.
A self-described “bleeding-heart conservative,” Kemp also gives strong, energetic voice to the centerpiece of Dole’s proposed economic plan, a 15 percent across-the-board tax cut to stimulate economic growth. Kemp was an apostle of supply-side economics long before Dole, who only lately adopted the supply-side theory.
Dole strategists long have thought he faced a major problem of perception among voters that the Republican Party–embodied in the visage of House Speaker Newt Gingrich and House Republicans–was lacking in compassion. The selection of Kemp was designed, in part, to try to change that view.
Dole was set to formally introduce Kemp as his running mate Saturday afternoon in Dole’s hometown, Russell, Kan. After a day of confusion on Friday, the unlikely Republican ticket was sealed. But, true to his promise, Dole tried to keep the news a secret and nearly succeeded.
“Bob Dole made the call,” said campaign press secretary Nelson Warfield. “Bob Dole got the answer he was looking for and we’ve got a veep. The stage is now set. The players are in place and . . . the curtain goes up on the drama of taking the White House back from Bill Clinton.”
Dole placed the call from his Russell home to Kemp, who was in a holding room in the Dallas-Ft. Worth airport. Kemp had been met at the airport by Dole’s former Senate chief of staff Sheila Burke and lawyer Roderick DeArment, who headed Dole’s vice presidential search team. A campaign source said Dole and Kemp talked for 15 minutes.
Kemp, an unpaid co-director of the conservative think tank Empower America, for years has advocated expanding the Republican Party, encouraging efforts to reach out to minorities and devising economic programs that target urban areas.
In selecting Kemp, Dole went against his own criteria for a running mate with whom he had a long, personal relationship. He and Kemp never have been close and, at times, have been highly critical of each other.
Kemp had given the Dole campaign strong indications that he would endorse Dole during the Republican primaries (the campaign had chartered a jet to take Kemp to New Hampshire) only to have Kemp spurn them and back publisher Steve Forbes.
Dole and Kemp no doubt will have to answer their many policy differences on issues such as affirmative action and immigration policy.
Kemp broke with most Republicans when he vocally opposed Proposition 187, a 1994 California ballot initiative to deny services to illegal immigrants; Dole supported the proposal. This year, Dole backs another California initiative to repeal state affirmative action programs; Kemp has criticized it on grounds that it sends the wrong message to minorities.
Politics often breeds strange relationships of convenience, and Kemp brings Dole badly needed energy in the race to make up the wide margin by which President Clinton now leads Dole in every national survey. And from this point, Kemp will be expected to run on Dole’s agenda, not his own.
As housing secretary in the Bush Cabinet, Kemp was often at odds with administration officials. For instance, he publicly criticized Bush for sponsoring a tax increase in 1990 that broke a pledge the president had made. And Kemp’s constant push for funding urban empowerment zones also created friction.
“I sure hope Bob and he have had a heart-to-heart talk, that Bob sat him down and said, `Jack, you’ve been given to saying things at odds with my position and you’ve just got to submerge yourself to my position on these issues,’ ” said former House GOP leader Bob Michel of Illinois.
Former Veterans Affairs chief Ed Derwinski, now a volunteer on Dole’s campaign, said that at Bush Cabinet meetings Kemp often would offer up his views on matters beyond the scope of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“But that’s Jack Kemp. Jack is, I guess, the best word you could use for him is energetic,” Derwinski said.
Kemp also has a long public record of speeches, interviews, votes and policy positions that will undergo intense scrutiny in the coming days and weeks.
Already, Kemp’s political opponents have distributed a long list of instances in which they try to portray him as out of the mainstream. One policy certain to be criticized is Kemp’s longstanding view that the nation should return to a gold standard to determine the value of the dollar.
And Kemp has been a target of Dole’s barbed wit. During the 1988 presidential campaign, Dole said of the former professional football player: “You’ve been playing quarterback too long.”
Dole added to that sentiment: “There was a certain football player who forgot his helmet and then started talking supply-side theory.”
And of Kemp’s shock of immaculately groomed hair, Dole said he was “holding out for a deduction on hair spray.”
On balance, however, Dole has decided that Kemp could best help energize his campaign.
Dole passed over Sen. Connie Mack of Florida, former South Carolina Gov. Carroll Campbell, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Michigan Gov. John Engler. The campaign on Friday also formally notified Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar and Oklahoma Sen. Don Nickles that they would not be selected.
While each offered potential strength–Mack and Engler possibly delivering key states, and Engler and McCain possibly delivering a region–Dole went for a candidate he hopes has national appeal.
“Good quarterbacks are always ready,” Kemp said.
Dole had said earlier this year that he wanted his vice presidential pick to be a “10.” Without conceding that Kemp was his choice, Dole said Friday that his running mate was “probably an 11.”
Dole’s campaign hopes his choice for vice president will fuel an enthusiastic convention that they say he very much needs. With all the talk of a vice presidential candidate, one possibly negative story emerged.
Gov. William Weld of Massachusetts, who had praised the idea of Kemp as a vice presidential candidate, withdrew from a prime-time speaking slot at the convention after the event’s managers demanded that he abandon the planned centerpiece of his speech–abortion. Weld favors abortion rights and was critical of the GOP’s anti-abortion platform.
“I wanted to give a speech about a woman’s right to choose and `Big Tent’ and the future of the party and they didn’t want it,” Weld told the Boston Globe. “Didn’t fit with the program.”
