Many liberals find Kemp's commitment to capitalist and self-empowerment principles disturbing, particularly for the head of a department commonly believed to be their domain. Democrats cannot or will not admit that their tried and tested methods of urban development--which have empowered bureaucracies rather than people--haved failed.
BESIDES his ideas, Kemp's contagious enthusiasm, sincere compassion and unshakable optimism are personal qualities that Democrats--with the exception of Jesse Jackson--have lacked since the days of Bobby Kennedy. While cocktail party liberals talk about the poor, Kemp talks with them, face to face on his many tours through the most embattled streets of America.
Although many say he wanted to run the Treasury, Kemp has found his niche in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Months after assuming the post, he proposed more than 50 recommendations to combat the political favoritism and corruption that has plagued the department in previous Democratic and Republican administrations.
If his reforms succeed, Kemp will be remembered for turning a bureaucratic cesspool into an effective and vibrant instrument of reform.
Within the GOP--whose meaning he wants to change to the "growth and opportunity party"--Kemp's conservative credentials are impeccable. Besides opposing high taxes. Kemp supported the Nicaraguan Contras and has stuck to his anti-abortion ideals. No wonder liberals were confused when he received three standing ovations at last summer's NAACP conference in Washington.
A commited Reaganite who often confers with Coretta Scott King and espouses Lincolnian and Jeffersonian principles, Kemp could woo Black voters back to the Republican Party and thus deprive the Democrats of their most reliable constituency.
As conservatives begin to realize the urgency of urban problems and as "Young Turk" Republicans like House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich urge greater inclusiveness in the GOP, the times seem to have finally caught up with the visionary Jack Kemp. Someone to watch in 1996, Kemp is the Republican's best hope for the future--and the Democrats' worst fear.