Big Jolly Politics

politics in Harris County and Texas

Book Review: JFK and the Reagan Revolution

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Review by Steve Parkhurst

A new book will be available Tuesday that examines the beginning of modern supply-side economics, and how the first President to suggest the successful economic policy was actually, a Democrat. Although Ronald Reagan launched an economic revolution in the 1980s, he was not the first president to put supply-side economics into practice. That honor goes to John F. Kennedy.
 
JFK and the Reagan Revolution by Lawrence (Larry) Kudlow and Brian Domitrovic takes an experienced and professional look at the policy workings of John F. Kennedy as he sought in his day to turn around a flailing economy and a country that was seeing more people unfit for the labor force every day. This was also a time when top earners were taxed at a rate of 91 percent of their income. Yes, 91 percent, there was a time…
 
JFK and the Reagan Revolution begins with events surrounding Inauguration Day 1961, then ventures backward a bit to set the scene, and then it starts playing out like a daily recap of what was happening. The calendar moved into 1962 and into 1963, and the whole time, the reader knows what’s coming in November 1963, but not so much about what was happening on tax rates and monetary policy as we learn in this book.
 
Most of us are familiar with two things about John F. Kennedy’s presidency, even those of us who were not alive when Kennedy was president: the inauguration on January 20, 1961 in the freezing cold which included Robert Frost reciting a poem, and also included the “ask not” phrase that Kennedy delivered flawlessly; and the tragic end of the Kennedy presidency at the hands of an assassin.
 
To properly tell the story, the authors put particular focus on a period in 1962 when John F. Kennedy took the gloves off and really went to work on his tax plans. To do this, Kudlow and Domitrovic focus on three big speeches that Kennedy gave that year. 
 
The first was a commencement address at Yale on June 11, in which none other than Arthur Laffer was in the crowd. The second was a nationally televised speech on the American economy in New York on August 13, which the authors note, “clearly ranks among the most economically sophisticated statements that any president has made on the impact of the tax code on the economy.”
 
The third speech took place at the Economic Club of New York on December 14. As Kudlow and Domitrovic note about this speech, “Kennedy’s case was that the government had gotten too big–this was why the private sector had failed to reach its potential and growth was hobbled.” This speech included a chance for audience members to submit questions, as the questions were asked one-by-one via a moderator. Kennedy “slayed his audience” so much so that the moderator finally said, “Mr. President, I ran out of questions. All I’d like to say is congratulations on your answers.”
 
President Kennedy was a man who knew what he was talking about as he hit his stride in making this case for tax reform, he knew that economic growth was both necessary and achievable. His rhetoric would start to take the shape of legislation early in 1963, so the December 14 speech was a great time to be in top form.
 
The Kennedy presidency ended on its 1,036th day, and with the bookends being January 20, 1961 and November 22, 1963, there was a remarkable development of economic policy in between. This policy would be started by John Kennedy, and it would be passed into legislation after Kennedy’s death by president Lyndon Johnson.
 
The Kennedy tax cut was stalled in the legislative process at the time of his assassination. It took President Johnson and his special way of getting things done to finally pass the legislation and get the bill on his desk for signature.
 
The first downside here was that LBJ himself, like many others on the left, was also not a believer in tax rate cuts, despite the economic growth that ensued because of the rate cuts. Eventually he started to chip away at reversing the tax policy until it no longer resembled what John Kennedy had envisioned.
 
The second downside was that while the tax cuts did achieve their purpose and the economy did improve as people went back to work, the government collected more tax revenues and with Democrats controlling things at the time, government promptly grew. Dollars for D.C. meant spending projects galore. And of course, it was at this time that LBJ’s Great Society was given life.
 
As interesting as anything else revealed in this book, is the care and concern that JFK felt for the poor and those in poverty. The authors point to John Kennedy as being someone that we might least expect to be as concerned as he was about the less fortunate. Given the later actions of Robert Kennedy, perhaps we should not be as surprised as we might be. John Kennedy would recognize, “our cities are being engulfed in squalor.” Kennedy wanted to do something about this, but his solutions deviated from those of other Democrats.
 
The difference between Kennedy and Johnson could not have become more clear. As the authors note, “Kennedy would detail some new achievement that the nation could make if the growth rate jumped, including alleviating poverty, building schools, and enhancing national defense.” In contrast, Lyndon Johnson saw government as the answer. To the surprise of even the most ardent voices on the left, this increase in government spending did not alleviate poverty, it entrenched people in it.
 
It is most instructive to look at the movement on tax rate cuts by the political parties. Here was John Kennedy in the 1960s going against the grain, and going against most of the advice he was getting. More spending was the order of the day, just keep spending money and the economy will recover. Going back in time, Democrats in the 1820s and 1840s had an understanding of the Laffer Curve, well before there was an Arthur Laffer. The Democratic party of the 1800s knew incentives mattered, and that they worked.
 
The economics profession has always felt an embarrassing sting from the success of supply-side economics as it went counter to much of mainstream economic thinking. Worse for the economics establishment, the best advocates were not economists, simply people who understood the concept and were able to explain it: think Robert Bartley, Jack Kemp and Jude Wanniski; and think both presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. Even though Robert Mundell and Arthur Laffer were economists, they can easily be dismissed. The Laffer Curve can be laughed off as a cartoon on a napkin, rather than a simpler explanation for what the establishment wants to pretend is too complex for the commoners.
 
An argument avoided by the Left of today is an argument that John F. Kennedy made in advocating his supply-side tax policies, that getting our tax rates right alleviates poverty, educates children, puts people back to work and allows for a better national defense.
 
The professional Left is haunted by the success of John F. Kennedy’s tax policies. Their party today does not recognize what Kennedy did. So much so that even John Kennedy’s daughter Caroline and the late Ted Kennedy once requested that John Kennedy’s image not be used when advocating for tax rate cuts. Kudlow and Domitrovic point out the fallacies in these arguments.
 
And speaking of the professional Left, the New York Times is exposed once again, this time by Kudlow and Domitrovic, even if briefly. But the Times’ misunderstanding of economics is important for a newspaper with a readership as large as theirs. They have never understood what worked and why, not in the 1960s or the 1980s, and if they cannot grasp the importance of this, how can they properly convey what is happening today or will happen in the future?
 
The media always fret about recessions. That is because they don’t understand them. The media views any economic anomaly as a chance for the politicians to “do something” which usually means raising taxes on the highest earners to redistribute via government spending. Recessions are a time of markets sorting things out, and sometimes shuffling bad ideas out the door. And to be clear, no one roots for a recession. Kudlow and Domitrovic addressed this point, “it has long been clear that recessions are a good time to start a business. Not only are the odds of a future economic upswing reasonable during a business trough but entrepreneurs can readily assemble labor and capital in the service of their new idea during recessions, because so much is idle.”
 
This comes down to knowing who to trust. The New York Times has been wrong on this issue for over half a century and counting. Why would we believe them now? And they serve as source for so many others, when they get it wrong, all their disciples get it wrong as well. Before we knew it, they had us believing that what happened did not happen, and that what did not happen would have been really scary if it happened. They do not see that two presidents, both of different parties, tried and succeeded in the face of the loyal opposition.
 
Perhaps if President Kennedy had lived, either his bill would not have become law at all, or his longer term success would have been more convincing to the skeptics. President Reagan got his tax rate cut in the first year of his presidency, and he got to tinker and reform and got the mix just right so that he oversaw seven incredible years; the “seven fat years” as dubbed by Robert Bartley. An important part of this book is the latter third that details the years after the John F. Kennedy tax rate cuts went into effect, and this includes the Reagan Revolution and brings us right up to the present.
 
Larry Kudlow and Brian Domitrovic have done a tremendous service to the study of history, as well as economics, by writing this book. JFK and the Reagan Revolution is very easy to read and the storytelling is compelling; it is rare for a book like this to be both of these things. As they reveal, getting things right is not as complicated as some would have us believe. It has been done by both parties in the past. Freedom and prosperity are not opposite ends of the same rope; they are what the next generation of supply-siders can help us achieve by learning from the past and winning the argument.

What will Trump build?

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Ed Hubbard
Ed Hubbard

Well, Super Tuesday is over, and as Republicans survey the rubble left in its wake, we need to get an answer from our front runner to this question:  “Mr. Trump, what will you build?”  The answer to that question will not only decide the fate of our party, but also our country.

As I described in my last post, I came of age as Reagan set about designing and building a New Republican Party.  His blueprint called for creating a new conservative party that restored the edifice of Madisonian government built on the foundation of the individual, the family, faith, private enterprise, and local and state responsibility, and to relight the beacon of America to guide the world away from the darkness of communism and toward a model of freedom.  He called his vision “A Shining City on a Hill,” and he persuaded the GOP and the country to help him build it.

But almost as soon as he left office, all the old factions that he had tried to blend into this “new” party began to fight against each other to alter the blueprint to fit their own agendas.  Soon, as we fought, the liberals and progressives reasserted themselves to continue their decades-long remodeling of our culture and politics away from the Madisonian model and towards a hyper-secular, European, democratic-socialist model of national, top-down governance.  While we splintered, they remodeled; and, eventually, we and our elected leadership were reduced to simply forming picket lines of protest around the progressive worksite.

By 2009, many people had enough and wanted to break through the picket lines and tear down what the progressives were changing.  By last summer, the anger of those wanting to stop the progressive work had reached a fever pitch, but our party leaders appeared incapable of doing anything but protest and picket.

Enter the great deal-maker and developer, Donald Trump.  I, for one, do not believe that he was the best candidate to lead, restore, or unite our party going into the 2016 election; but, frankly that was never his intent.  Instead, it is now clear that he planned to demolish both the Republican Party and the Washington “establishment” and start the construction work all over again.  To those whose frustrations had boiled-over, Trump’s demolition of the remnants of the New Republican Party of Reagan was welcome, because they viewed it as the first step toward demolishing all that was wrong with what had been built over the last generation since Reagan went home to California.  But the problem is, none of us really know what Mr. Trump plans to build after the rubble is cleared (other than a wall paid for by Mexico), and many of us fear that he really has no plan for rebuilding America after the demolition is finished.

But a good real-estate developer—and Trump has been a very successful developer—does not start demolition work without a plan for what he will build in its place; nor does he start a historical restoration of a landmark without a researched plan for the restoration work.  So, it is time for The Donald to show us his blueprint to “Make America Great Again.”

This plan must not be just for one building, but must encompass rebuilding the entire “Shining City” that has been left in ruins by the work of modern progressives (and the neglect of post-Reagan conservatives).  It must include clearing rubble and building new structures for a new century, as well as carefully designing restorations of great landmarks of our traditions and principles.  It also must include a plan for relighting the beacon of freedom and stability to protect the world against the new threats we face in this century.  If his design incorporates a strong foundation and infrastructure of the individual, family, faith, private enterprise, and local and state responsibility upon which a modern, Madisonian city will be built, I believe he eventually can persuade our party and our country to follow him to “Make America Great Again.”

But if his plan is just to demolish the ruins of the “Shining City” without more, then we conservatives must stop this project now before we lose the last remnants of what we worked so hard to build over two generations.

Mr. Trump, if you truly want to “Make America Great Again,” it is time to show us your plan.

 

Where Will We Go From Here?

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After agonizing for months over my choice in the GOP Presidential race in this 2016 election, I voted yesterday.  For the first time since I cast my first vote almost 40 years ago, I felt a sense of loss and bewilderment as I left the polling place.

Forty years ago this month, I began my personal journey as a conservative.  On a cold evening in February, 1976, a friend of mine and I—both in the second semester of our senior year of high school—attended a small gathering in Peoria, Illinois, where Ronald Reagan was speaking to a group comprised mostly of old friends from his high school and college days in Dixon and Eureka, Illinois.

I was not there that night by accident.  Twice before, due to my parents’ political and social ties, I had personally engaged with the future President.  The first time, which I only “remember” through the stories that my father later told, the then-Governor of California was so bored with the adults who were seeking his attention, that he left their company and spent the better part of an afternoon talking and laughing with a 10-year old boy who was oblivious to who he was, but who enjoyed and monopolized his company.  The second time, a few years later, I spoke with him over the phone twice during calls he made to my mother to plan a retirement party for one of his college football teammates, and he genuinely seemed to care about how I was doing in school and what my own hopes and dreams were.  It was because of these experiences, and the coaxing of my parents and my friend, that I took a break from home work on a winter night in 1976 to attend the meeting in Peoria.

Reagan spoke that night, not as a stilted candidate, but as a friend to those of us in the room, about his vision for the GOP and the country, as well as his strategy for the upcoming Illinois primary.  And what I heard that night would start me on my own political journey—one I still travel today.  Much of what he said that night would find its way into the 1976 GOP platform, and then into his blueprint for a “New Republican Party,” which he unveiled in early 1977.

It is hard to explain to someone who did not live through those years the state of the country at that time.  Like others my age, I had grown-up watching the country seemingly unravel through the riots, the Vietnam War, Watergate, and Soviet expansion, and it truly seemed like no one knew what to do or how to lead the country into the future.  And yet, here was a man that exuded confidence and optimism about the future, and who seemed to deeply understand and love our country in a way I had never heard expressed.  Though I would see him speak a few more times over the next decade, it would be what he said that night that changed everything for me.

I think the journalist and author, Theodore White, captured the predicament we faced in those years best in his two books:  In Search of History and America in Search of Itself.  At the end of the first book, written soon after the 1976 election, he saw a coming decision between

whether America would be transformed, in the name of Opportunity, simply into a Place, a gathering of discreetly defined and entitled groups, interests and heritages; or whether it could continue to be a nation, where all heritages joined under roof-ideas of communities within government.

Then, toward the end of the second book, published after the 1980 election, he made the following observation:

I write and close this book in a clouded time, not knowing whether it is twilight or dawn, an era ending or an era beginning.  It is twilight if new policy carries us back to the old America, before its transformation; it is dawn if new policy carries us forward to release us from civil fear and the web of federal control.  Somewhere, in the decades of upheaval, came a wrong turning.  Another wrong turning could take politics away from traditional politicians and bring us convulsions in the streets.

For most of my adult life, I believed that—with Reagan’s guidance—we had come through the upheaval to start a revitalization of America based on the best of its principles, that the world had been made safe from totalitarianism through American leadership, and that a consensus had formed that “the era of big government was over.”

But then, we took another wrong turn that only now seems clear through our rear-view mirror.  Through the tumultuous year of scandal and impeachment in 1998, the disputed election of 2000, 9/11, and the Iraq War, the new consensus broke apart to unearth grievances and ideas that we thought had been vanquished.  Then, the responses to Katrina and the financial meltdown of 2008 showed how fragile our resurrection from civil fear and federal control had been.  And over these last 7 years, even after the election of our first African-American President, the unraveling of the consensus and the re-emergence of federal control exposed the consequence of our failure to fully assimilate all of our neighbors into our American community.  Adding to all of this upheaval at home, the progress we made to form a better world through American leadership has crumbled, with Russia, China, North Korea, and a totalitarian faction of political Islam, each threatening world stability—and America.

Frankly, I believe we are more fractured at home and abroad today than at any time since Nixon left the White House, and there is no Reagan to help guide us out of this mess.  Instead, we are left with candidates who either lack the understanding of America to lead, lack an appreciation of current problems to lead, lack the skills to lead, lack the vision to lead, lack the experience and maturity to lead, or lack the integrity to lead.  In this vacuum has emerged a convulsion of political extremes, which is leading us toward a choice between an entertaining populist who wants to tear the “establishment” down and start over, and two varying degrees of socialists.  As the late Yogi Berra might have said, we’ve reached the fork in the road and we have to take it.

So, as I left the polling place yesterday I truly felt as though we had lost what we had worked so hard to re-establish over these last 40 years, and I’m bewildered with the fork we will take this fall.  I honestly don’t know in the short term where we will go from here, and I am concerned that things will get worse before they get better.

However, as I think back to that night 40 years ago, I still believe that eventually the answer will emerge and we will find the right road to take.  But it won’t be behind the leadership of another Reagan—that moment is over.  Instead, the leadership, when it emerges will come from the source of strength that Reagan believed in—individual Americans applying our shared principles.  When and if we embrace each other and our shared principles again, and we find the courage to use them again to build a strong society of free people, this moment too shall pass.

I believe this will happen, because it must happen.  As Reagan reminded President Ford and the delegates at the end of the 1976 Republican Convention, in the battle for our exceptional country and society “there is no substitute for victory.”

 

Book Review: Too Dumb to Fail by Matt Lewis

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Review by Steve Parkhurst

“Conservatism is at a crossroads.”

Matt Lewis does not open his new book, Too Dumb to Fail, with this warning, it shows up later after the facts have been laid out and the suggestions for survival have been made. But it is an important premise that was important throughout Lewis’ new work.

Too Dumb To Fail is a page turner for sure. Given the title of the book, you might suspect the book was written by a vitriolic blonde bomb-thrower from Fox News. Fortunately for those of us who want to win and grow the movement, this is not the case. The subtitle of the book illustrates its true purpose: How the GOP Betrayed the Reagan Revolution to Win Elections (and How It Can Reclaim Its Conservative Roots).

Too Dumb to Fail moves at a nice pace because Matt Lewis is an interesting writer. He writes clearly and does not overcomplicate topics that are easy to muddy-up. The difference between Matt Lewis and so many other writers is that he cares about the conservative movement. He is not looking back at 40 to 60 years of activism and then condemning everything about the future. Matt Lewis is as much a part of the future of our movement as he is a part of its past. Some of us campaign-types heard Matt teach sessions at party conventions, some of which included his first book, Teaching Elephants to Talk. Matt’s ability to teach us to talk, is perhaps what makes him such a good writer. He is not a lecturer; he is a teacher.

Lewis walks us through a brief, yet thorough history of the conservative movement, which of course includes Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign, an edited version of William F. Buckley’s arrival in the movement, and of course Ronald Reagan’s slow but steady rise to the highest office in the land. Chapter 1, “A History of Brilliant Conservatism,” concludes with a section titled “Conservatism Was Smart.”

That eventually leads us to a really interesting chapter that discusses the hucksters who fleece our movement of dollars, yet produce nothing. Lewis humorously identifies these people as the Con$ervative Movement. For instance, Lewis writes about a group of PACs that spent roughly $54 million, but not quite $4 million of that was actually spent on getting Republicans elected. $50 million in conservative dollars wasted, possibly extorted, just in the 2014 election cycle alone. That story will get your blood boiling. We did well in 2014, but we could have done even better.

Lewis similarly discusses the 2013 Virginia race for Governor where Ken Cuccinelli nobly took on Terry McAuliffe. One group took in over $2 million saying they were going to help get Cuccinelli elected, yet they spent “less than one-half of one percent” on Cuccinelli’s losing campaign. Lewis also briefly touches upon “Joe the Plumber” (a phenomenon I never understood) and his brief stay in the limelight of the Con$ervative Movement.

There are so many great examples in this book that really highlight the problems we are up against, even within our own movement. Lewis points to absurd statistics thrown out by Donald Trump, which is one thing. Then we realize he got the phony statistics from one of Ann Coulter’s books, and the statistics have been thoroughly discredited. Then there is Donald Trump’s lack of understanding that the money that funds Planned Parenthood “is fungible.” Followed later by Ann Coulter declaring, this time via Twitter, in response to Donald Trump’s immigration plan, “I don’t care if [Donald Trump] wants to perform abortions in White House after this immigration policy paper.”

One more point about Ann Coulter, and this is not covered in Matt Lewis book per se, but this illustrates the deeper point. South Carolina recently held their Republican primary and Marco Rubio finished behind Ann’s guy, Donald Trump. Coulter tweeted, “Could someone please have Marco’s bartender dad make me a mojito? I’d like to toast Trump’s amazing victory.” Marco Rubio’s dad passed away in 2010. This is why sometimes we seem like we’re swimming against the tide, within our own movement.

Lewis puts great emphasis throughout this book on intellectual thought in the Republican party, more of it in the distant past than in its present. Ours is a movement founded upon solid philosophical and intellectual arguments and principles. Lewis is not writing this to tell us that we are dumb now. He is telling us why this intellectual foundation matters. “When you lose intellectuals, you lose popular culture and, before you know it, you’ve lost the culture war,” writes Lewis.

Why did Obama’s “you didn’t build that” remark not really matter to the outcome of the 2012 election? Lewis has an interesting take on this in the wider view of our culture wars.

Lewis challenges us not to simply walk away from pop culture, but rather to influence it and affect it. “Christian conservatives must work to authentically engage the culture, instead of trying to ape what’s already popular.” As Lewis notes later, “By first rejecting the culture and turning inward, and then focusing almost solely on politics, conservatives now find themselves increasingly shut out of major conversations that average Americans are interested in.” Lewis arrives at a sensible and pragmatic solution, “The answer is for conservatives to make good art, not necessarily to make conservative art.”

Do you think pop culture and the conservative movement do not go together? Lewis correctly points out that, “Winning elections means having a tent big enough to attract a majority.” He follows that up later with an entire chapter titled, “Modernize, Don’t Moderate.” He was right to do this because too often the “big tent” concept gets labeled as something it is not, and those in pursuit of a bigger tent are labeled as well.

We have some demographic realities to face. Whether it is race, education, age, location, or marital status, our movement is losing ground in many of the numbers that matter. Lewis writes, “the conservative moment appears to want to keep the GOP a party almost exclusively for older, whiter, more rural Americans.” He continues, “For Reagan-Kemp conservatives, this is a philosophical and mathematical problem.” Rather than “doubling down on cohorts that are losing population,” Lewis is instead suggesting ways that we can grow the movement without dumbing down our principles.

On election day 2012, when Mitt Romney would fall short of unseating an incumbent President, exit poll respondents were asked about four qualities of each candidate, Romney and Obama. Mitt Romney won on three of the four qualities, but it was the one quality that Obama won that made all the difference. On the question about which candidate “cares about people like me,” Obama won in a landslide. Lewis tells us what that number was, and why it matters.

Lewis has a message for talk radio hosts, read the book to see it, it is important. Lewis talks about the faux warnings from some hosts and what he terms “apocalyptic punditry.” If we “never leave the echo chamber,” Lewis warns, we are more prone to believe the “apocalyptic punditry” or even buy into the unbelievable election predictions, like the one Dick Morris made in 2012 about Romney winning 300 electoral votes on his way to a 5 to 10 point win. (Romney got 206 electoral votes, Obama got 332, and Romney lost by nearly 4 percentage points). Lewis humorously notes, “Morris’s predictions were so egregious that Fox News actually dropped him as a contributor.”

So, what should conservatives do today? Lewis writes, “The real answer, I suggest, is to look to the Reagan model-but not in a way that looks backward or assumes nominating a hard-core conservative is a panacea. Reagan looked to the future, and so should we.” This will not be easy, change is tough. But change can also be our missing ingredient. The reality about the Right, is as Lewis notes, “it has to be better, stronger, tougher, smarter.” Too Dumb to Fail can help with all of that.

Finally, readers will get twenty book suggestions at the end. I am going to do what every author wants done and suggest you get a copy of the book and read the list (and the entire book) for yourself. Lewis’ book suggestions are not typical. If you go in expecting to see books by Sean Hannity, Dick Morris or Michael Savage, or any of Ann Coulter’s books, you will be disappointed. This list is deeper than all of that.

There is so much more in this book. For instance, what is pastor Tim Keller doing that is worth replicating within the conservative movement? What are “Ideological Immigrants”? Why are we implored to “Teach Your Children Well”? What about think tanks that are now becoming activists as well? What is “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind”? And what is the reality about how to “Appeal to Hispanics”?

This all amounts to a very interesting book at a very good time.

I have intentionally been vague on many of the topics discussed in Too Dumb to Fail because I want to really encourage you to read this book. It is a quick read, it is succinct and well written, it is a critique and not a condemnation, and perhaps as important, it is aspirational. Too Dumb to Fail is a book I will go back to over the next few years and make sure I have properly implemented many of the suggestions that Lewis makes.

As a final tease for Too Dumb to Fail, any book that can recall a scene from the baseball movie Bull Durham, which involves a great scene between Crash Davis and Nuke LaLoosh, and can relate that to political messaging, that’s a job well done. Enjoy.

Paul Ryan For Speaker

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Paul Ryan American flag

By Ed Hubbard and Steve Parkhurst

By the end of this week, Congressman Paul Ryan will be the next Speaker of the House. Both of us believe that his election will be a great step forward for our party and our country.

Unfortunately, some among us will always be unhappy—even when they get what they want.  They will continue to criticize, fundraise, and write books based on the division they continue to create, including now shooting their rhetorical guns at Ryan, whom many of these “conservative” critics adored just yesterday.  Seriously, with friends like these, who needs the Democrats?

Regardless of the noise these dividers may generate, the truth is that the elevation for Ryan to the Speakership provides us with a rare opportunity to both reform government based on conservative principles, and to then actually govern using those principles.

For his part, Ryan has been offering insights into what he wants to accomplish as Speaker. In an email last week to his House colleagues, Ryan wrote, “I know many of you want to show the country how to fix our tax code, how to rebuild our military, how to strengthen the safety net, and how to lift people out of poverty. I know you’re willing to work hard and get it done, and I think this moment is ripe for real reform.”

For a real understanding of Paul Ryan, look no further than to his 2014 book, The Way Forward: Renewing the American Idea. The reality of Ryan’s early life, including the loss of his dad, and his introduction to the political process, are all worth reading in further detail. Understanding Ryan’s family, and his commitment to and appreciation of time with his wife and three kids, is also worthwhile.  All of these life experiences have combined with his commitment to conservative principles to create a coherent conservative reformer and leader.

As for the “real reform” that Ryan spoke of, as a leader in the Republican party, he already has demonstrated his willingness to buck the system as needed, and he has offered roadmaps for economic growth and entitlement reform.

A post last week by the Tax Foundation stated that under a Speaker Ryan, “the prospects for sound, comprehensive tax reform are bright.” This should be no surprise, after all Ryan had his economic and supply-side upbringing at the foot of the master, the late Jack Kemp. This finding was based on the ten months that Ryan has spent as Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and the work of that body in those ten months.

And Ryan’s commitment to Reagan’s and Kemp’s visions of the Republican party doesn’t end with tax reform, but extends to their dreams of giving all our neighbors a hand-up out of poverty through the creative use of the free market, the private sector, and local institutions. Fifty years of failure caused by the current model of a “war on poverty” is simply enough wasted time and money, and enough of the loss of dignity, pride and hope for the millions who got swallowed up by the insidious programs and offerings from big government. Ryan points a way for our party and our communities toward a better model.

Paul Ryan released his findings and offered a new plan in the summer of 2014. His plan went nowhere, as is to be expected with President Obama clinging to his pen and his phone. However, what Ryan seeks, a consolidation of redundant services that offer help to the poor and needy, and thus a wiser use of the money so that more of the money being spent is enabling those seeking a hand-up and not a handout, instead of being spent of bigger and bigger government.

Ryan’s embrace of civil society is true to the roots of conservatism. True conservatism is rooted in efforts of individuals and private organizations stepping in where government can be pushed aside. This line of thinking needs a greater embrace from Republicans and from conservatives. If you desire a more constitutionally limited government, this is one way to begin the march toward it.

Therefore, our emphatic support of Ryan should not be confused with an embrace of the idea that conservatives should “compassionately” do more at the federal level. As limited government conservatives, we want power restored to local communities, sooner rather than later. Instead, our support for Paul Ryan is an embrace of a new way forward. It is support for shining a light on problems that get us to stop tinkering around the edges, and instead adopt reforms that really help our neighbors live better lives and achieve their God-given potentials.

One way to gage Ryan’s potential is by the enemies he is already creating—he is the Speaker the Dems have always feared.  According to the likes of the New York Times, Huffington Post, Mother Jones and Slate, the liberals don’t want him as the next Speaker.  In fact, John Hart candidly noted in his editorial for Opportunity Lives, “Ryan is the Speaker conservatives have always dreamed of and liberals have always feared. Let the battle begin.”

Rick Manning, president of Americans for Limited Government, wrote for Investor’s Business Daily last week, “If Paul Ryan is speaker, he will have a chance to lead. A chance to show his critics that he can truly unite the Republican Party around limited government principles and make progress in stopping Obama’s agenda.”  We agree.

In his email to House colleagues last week, Ryan stated, “we can show the country what a commonsense conservative agenda looks like.” Again, we agree.  Let’s finally unite to press that agenda.

As we see it, Paul Ryan is the best choice for Speaker of the House. He is the right man at the right time.

Review: Jack Kemp by Mort Kondracke and Fred Barnes

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By Steve Parkhurst

Finally! It may have taken six and a half years after his passing, but there is finally a book decidedly about Jack Kemp. Due for release in bookstores and online this coming Tuesday, Jack Kemp: The Bleeding-Heart Conservative Who Changed America by Mort Kondracke and Fred Barnes, offers readers a fresh recap of the life of “the most important politician of the twentieth century who was not President.” A sentiment I agree with fully.

Any reader of Big Jolly Politics knows of the regular mentions of Jack Kemp on this website, primarily by Ed Hubbard and myself, but not limited to the two of us.

While Jack Kemp is not an authorized biography, this is the first attempt to explain a man and his legacy that deserves understanding and studying. Jack Kemp is well documented and it reads fairly well as it never gets bogged down in mush the way some political narratives can.

The authors rely on news reports of the day and official documents to back up plenty of fresh interviews with those who worked with Jack Kemp over the course of his days as a football player, a Congressman, a Presidential candidate, a Vice-Presidential candidate and finally as a think tank entrepreneur.

Kondracke and Barnes spend a lot of time weaving their way through the two biggest domestic legislative accomplishments of the Ronald Reagan presidency: the Economic Recovery and Tax Act of 1981 and the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Jack Kemp was crucial and necessary to both.

The supply-side economics which were the basis of the large tax rate cuts voted and signed into law in 1981 are but one part of the success story. The 1986 Tax Reform Act was at least equally as important, though seemingly less talked about in political writing. Much has been written about the supply-side economics movement on the 1970s and 1980s, but the 1986 story is told less often.

Both stories are shared in Jack Kemp in great detail, with Jack Kemp not necessarily playing the hero, but showing true leadership, much of it based purely on principle. And readers are offered a play-by-play for both, and for good reason.

The twenty-five years of prosperity that the tax rate cuts engineered are impossible to argue against, though many on the Left are still trying to debunk. And the tax reform was so monumental it garnered “the largest audience for a bill signing during the Reagan presidency.” And as Kondracke and Barnes note, “Reagan called the measure “the best anti-poverty bill, the best pro-family measure, the best job-creation program ever to come out of the Congress of the United States.”

The authors also editorialized, “The 1986 tax reform stands even now as a model for leaders of both parties who hope to make the tax code simpler, fairer, and more economically efficient.” Reading Jack Kemp makes this statement clearer, and valid.

These were stories worth reading. For some, the play-by-play will be too much minutiae to digest. For students or researchers, there can never be enough. It is a fine line to tread with a book such as this. Congressional and policy battles can be that way. And the policy fights are not limited to economics, but also reach into foreign policy and matters related to the defense of the nation.

Jack Kemp offers much in the way of campaign reporting on Kemp’s campaign for President in 1988 and his campaign to be Bob Dole’s Vice President in 1996. But compared to the policy battles of the day, the campaigns were given considerably less space.

One disappointment in Jack Kemp, is the lack of focus on Kemp’s work in what we would call “civil society,” though there are many differing views on what that actually refers to. Yes, there is an entire chapter titled “Poverty Warrior” which recounts Kemp’s years as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). But this chapter really does not do justice to what Jack Kemp wanted and what he was actually fighting for.

During the years of the first Bush Administration, 1989 and 1993, there was only one point where a Kempian approach to things could have really changed perceptions and reality for President Bush. That point came in 1992 when Los Angeles erupted into riots after the Rodney King jury verdict. Jack Kemp was probably the last best hope to save the Bush administration and earn it a second term in office.

But, it was too late to save the Bush presidency. The work that Kemp had pursued could have changed history, had there been a more receptive audience, both in the White House and around the country. By the time the Bush administration cared about what Jack Kemp wanted to address, Bill Clinton had already told audiences he felt their pain, and he was on his way to unseating an incumbent President. The riots earned a mention on parts of 6 pages, total. For a book that consists of 327 pages of content, this is a real shame.

Jack Kemp spent plenty of time and political capital fighting for community-saving ideas like urban enterprise zones and parental choice in education. Kemp was indeed a “poverty warrior” wanting to offer a light at the end of the tunnel for those in the worst of despair, and refusing to turn his back on “the least of these.” Kemp saw economic growth as a vital element to turning the tide, or in the “rising tide” that would lift all boats. While he could be long-winded, as Kondracke and Barnes point out, and Kemp could talk more than some audiences were willing to listen, he never stopped believing in or advocating for economic growth as the ultimate solution.

The authors record their ultimate conclusion this way, “The full Kemp model—“bleeding heart” and “conservative”—is what the nation needs. Politicians who are principled, dynamic, positive, cheerful, inclusive, bipartisan, optimistic, unorthodox, disposed to compromise, committed to courting minorities, urban oriented, pro-growth, and antibureaucratic—and interested in ideas and action, not political tactics or personal attack. Idealistic. Visionary.”

We can quibble about these words until the end of time, and we probably will. Though it is hard to argue against them and remain true to them at the same time. But, the vision that a “Kemp model” (as the authors see it) offers, is the possibility of a return to greatness.

The reason to seek the “Kemp model” again now is rather simplistic in its nature, especially from a political point of view. In their interview with Norman Ornstein, he told the authors, “if Kemp had prevailed, we would be looking at a majority Republican party today” and they put forth, “because a Kempian GOP could win 40 to 50 percent of the Hispanic vote and 15 to 20 percent of the African American vote (versus 27 percent and 6 percent, respectively, for Mitt Romney in 2012).”

It is hard to argue against that math.

There are many reasons why the Kempiam model did not succeed in the ways that it could have. Some of these reasons are covered by Kondracke and Barnes, other reasons will have to wait. What Jack Kemp makes clear, is that it can be done. It just cannot be done alone. Whether is a single politician who takes up the mantle against the D.C. machine, or by a society that sends elected representatives to Washington and just hopes for the best. Jack Kemp needed Ronald Reagan, and vise versa. But even then, they were two men against the world.

What we need will require a team.

Leaders, whether church, business or political, cannot make themselves the things that make up the “Kemp model.” Not overnight anyway. But we can nurture these things in our young people and in our next generation of leaders. To not do this, to not pursue these ideals, is to witness more of the same that we have watched since the day Ronald Reagan boarded Marine One for the last time and waved goodbye.

The price for such inaction is way too high.

Finally, there is a Jack Kemp story beyond the Washington D.C. area code waiting to be told. That story will be told. This narrative is not offered in this noble work by Mort Kondracke and Fred Barnes, but this book is an important first work in the telling of the Jack Kemp story and I highly recommend it.

As the title states, Jack Kemp “changed America”, it was not the other way around. To see the real possibilities that America can achieve, start with Jack Kemp add some Ronald Reagan, and begin the real work from there.