A number of lovely tributes have been made on behalf of Jack Kemp, who died of cancer last Saturday. Most of them have rightly touched on Jack’s intellectual contribution and his passionate belief in the power of ideas to shape history. In that respect, he was one of the most important political figures in the last half-century. Jack was an evangelist when it came to his ideas, and Reagan was his most important convert.  By 1976, Reagan had not yet embraced supply-side economics. By 1980 he had — and Kemp was the main reason.

Jack — with whom I worked closely in the 1990s, when I was policy director at Empower America — certainly had a healthy ego. But everyone knew, without question, that he was involved in politics not because he sought power for its own sake or in order to fulfill some deep personal ambition. He was involved in it because he believed in a set of ideas he thought would change the world. The best evidence of that worldview is that Jack never trimmed his message to fit his audience. He made his case when his ideas were in and out of fashion, when they won the applause as well as the jeers of the crowd. It just didn’t matter to him.

But with substance came style — a very valuable commodity in politics — and Jack was certainly blessed with it. Part of it was that he carried himself like we think a star quarterback ought to. He had good looks, charisma, and could dominate any room he was in. But there was more to it than just that. In the late 1970s and 1980s, Kemp helped make the GOP an exciting and appealing party, bursting with ideas, hopeful and future-oriented, gracious and without a trace of bitterness. The spirit of a party, like the spirit of a person, is at once intangible and terribly important. And Jack Kemp was a man who possessed a capacious and indomitable spirit. As far as I can tell, Jack was a man who had no known enemies, which is a fairly extraordinary achievement in politics. He seemed incapable of personalizing policy differences. There was a certain guilelessness in Jack; he approached people as if everyone in politics cared as much about ideas and possessed as much good will as he did. He was wrong about that, but he, and we, were better for it.

Jack was also the head of one of the finest families I have ever seen, in or out of politics. His wife Joanne is a woman of strength, deep faith, and grace; and his children Jeff, Jennifer, Judith, and Jimmy are people of integrity and character. I spoke to one of them on Friday — just hours before Jack was to pass away, as it turned out — and when our conversation was done, I was struck again by what an impressive, well-grounded family Jack helped raise.

I have long believed — a conviction that has only deepened over time — that cynicism is a terrible human quality. Politics, like every profession, has more than its fair share of cynics. But it has also been blessed with idealists, by men and women who conduct themselves in a way that encourages us about life and its possibilities.

Jack was an idealist rather than a cynic. He possessed a first-rate mind and a first-class heart, which explains why he inspired several generations, including mine. And even in his last years, Jack seemed forever young, as if he had magically escaped age and mortality. Of course he had not; none of us do. And now he is gone, though it still doesn’t quite seem real to me. Neither do the deaths of his friends Bill Buckley, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Richard John Neuhaus, all of whom have passed away in the last 30 months. The four of them reshaped American conservatism and American politics in profound and lasting ways. They loved their country, and they served her well and with honor. And now they are united again, in a city incorruptible and everlasting — and, I assume, where marginal tax rates are low and, knowing Jack Kemp, they are about to go lower still.

Jack Kemp was an imperfect man and a great man, a joy to be with and to work for. I miss him a lot. So should you. And so will America.

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