Kemp's credo.

• Author: Kabaservice, Geoffrey
• Position: 'Jack Kemp: The Bleeding-Heart Conservative Who Changed America' - Book review

Morton Kondracke and Fred Barnes, Jack Kemp: The Bleeding-Heart Conservative Who Changed America (New York: Sentinel, 2015), 400 pp., $29.95.

Who was the last century's most important Republican politician that failed to become president? For Fred Barnes and Morton Kondracke, the answer is Jack Kemp, the football-hero-turned-Congressman who served as secretary of housing and urban development under President George H. W. Bush and was the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 1996. In their encomium to the former football star, Barnes and Kondracke, veteran Washington journalists who were once colleagues at the New Republic, assert that Kemp deserves history's laurels because he led the charge for supply-side economics, rallied the Republican Party and President Ronald Reagan to his cause and thereby "help[ed] to win the cold war and convert much of the world to democratic capitalism."

Nor is this all. They add that he's worth remembering for his inspiring life, the positive spirit and idealistic policies he brought to Washington, and the need for Kemp's example in today's polarized politics and anemic economy. "[W]e have written this book," they explain, "because we believe America is in trouble, perhaps more deeply in trouble than in the 1970s. And we think that Jack Kemp's spirit--and his policy ideas--could again help turn the country around." And, although it's somewhat of a subsidiary theme in this biography, Kemp is notable for his tireless efforts to enlarge the GOP's tent by reaching out to minorities, young people, poor and working-class Americans, and other groups that did not traditionally vote Republican. Kondracke and Barnes' account is well-written and informative, but will their paean to Kemp really serve to revive him in today's GOP? Or did he do less to change America than they believe?

Kemp, who was born in 1935, grew up in Los Angeles, where his father owned a small trucking company and his mother was a social worker who spoke fluent Spanish. Fie inherited his parents' Republicanism as well as their Christian Science faith, which seems to have instilled in him a benign view of humanity and the conviction that anything could be accomplished through will and hard work. At age five, we are told, Kemp decided to become a quarterback. After college, Kemp knocked around with several professional football teams before catching on with the Buffalo Bills. Fie became a star quarterback and led the team to two American Football League championships in 1964 and 1965.

The game served him well. It was on the gridiron that he developed his style of bold, offense-minded leadership while becoming inured to booing crowds. (He threw more interceptions than touchdowns.) He later remarked, "Pro football gave me a good sense of perspective to enter politics. I'd already been booed, cheered, cut, sold, traded and hung in effigy."

His experience as president of the AFL players' union gave him a reverence for collective bargaining that most Republicans lacked. His close friendships with black teammates reinforced his belief in civil rights, and he helped get the AFL's 1965 all-star game moved out of segregated New Orleans. Kemp educated himself about politics and economics during bus and plane trips to away games, and he interned for California governor Ronald Reagan in 1967. Three years later, he parlayed his football...