Jack Kemp, a 1993 photo inscribed to Har­riet and Michael Langworth

“DASH OF GREYHOUND, SLIPPING THONGS…”

On Eleuthera, where we live from Decem­ber to April, there was vast fas­ci­na­tion, as one might expect, in the recent U.S. Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. One of the virtues of this Bahamas island far out in the Atlantic is that racism, in the sense we all know it in the so-called First World, doesn’t really exist. On our easy-going trop­i­cal strand, amid the smiles of wel­com­ing locals and old friends who have known each other for years, it just doesn’t seem to mat­ter whether the face in front of you is black or white.

So it was per­fectly nat­ural for the wife of our local gro­cer to ask me in all inno­cence and with­out ran­cor: “Is it pos­si­ble for a non-white to be elected President?”…

…And for me to reply with­out even a thought: “Sure. In fact it was pos­si­ble twelve years ago, if the ticket had been Colin Pow­ell and Jack Kemp.”

I am firmly con­vinced it was possible—not only because Colin Pow­ell, Hon­orary Mem­ber of The Churchill Cen­tre, is a man vast num­bers of peo­ple like or admire; but because Jack Kemp, Trustee of The Churchill Cen­tre, was equally so: a politi­cian who, like Churchill, never wrote off any voter, who believed that his lib­er­tar­ian phi­los­o­phy could appeal to all, that it was the height of patron­iza­tion to sin­gle out minor­ity groups and declare that they must have more gov­ern­ment because they can­not get by with less of it.

Jack was a man who lived life at max­i­mum veloc­ity, whether as cham­pi­onship quar­ter­back for the Buf­falo Bills, as a U.S. con­gress­man who pro­moted enter­prise zones in inner cities, as an empowerment-advocating Hous­ing Sec­re­tary, or as a can­di­date for Vice Pres­i­dent who described him­self as a “bleeding-heart con­ser­v­a­tive.” But you can read all about those achieve­ments by Googling his name. I would rather write about what he meant to Churchillians.

The Tenth Inter­na­tional Churchill Con­fer­ence in 1993, chaired by Merry Albe­rigi and held in Wash­ing­ton, was one of our most stel­lar occa­sions. We wel­comed Lady Thatcher, Win­ston Churchill, Ambas­sador Kirk­patrick, Celia Sandys and Gen­eral Pow­ell. We held a ser­vice at the Wash­ing­ton Navy Yard Chapel which dupli­cated that of Roo­sevelt and Churchill at Argen­tia in August 1941, with vet­er­ans of USS Augusta and HMS Prince of Wales to read the Lessons. We hosted Ambas­sador Alan Keyes, who not only sang five national anthems includ­ing God Defend New Zealand, but all six verses of The Bat­tle Hymn of the Repub­lic—with­out music in freez­ing cold on the steps of the Lin­coln Memo­r­ial. As Churchill wrote of Argen­tia: “Every verse seemed to stir the heart. It was a great hour to live.”

Jack Kemp was our keynote speaker at that con­fer­ence. In the sum­mer 2009 issue of Finest Hour we repub­lish what he said: words of wis­dom and inspi­ra­tion, deliv­ered with the vigor for which he was known, and not with­out humor. When his intro­ducer made so bold as to com­pare him to a for­mer con­gress­man named Abra­ham Lin­coln, Jack rose in haste to dis­claim even the slight­est sim­i­lar­ity. After her appre­ci­a­tion fol­low­ing his speech Jeane Kirk­patrick and Jack embraced: old col­leagues, vet­er­ans of polit­i­cal wars, together again, even though (as Jeane told me at din­ner), they had dif­fered fer­vently over the 1982 Falk­lands War, with Jack firmly on the side of Mar­garet Thatcher and Great Britain.

Jack and his gra­cious wife Joanne were with us again at the com­mis­sion­ing of USS Win­ston S. Churchill in Nor­folk in 2001, and we dined together in the ward­room (Finest Hour 111). His last run for office was now six years past, but he was still pas­sion­ate about what The New York Times called his “most impor­tant idea….the the­ory that deep cuts in taxes would lead to such an eco­nomic boom that much if not all of the rev­enue lost from lower taxes would be off­set by the addi­tional tax receipts that resulted from greater earnings.”

“What was it that Churchill said about Supply-Side eco­nom­ics?” Jack asked between bites.

“He didn’t say any­thing about Supply-Side eco­nom­ics,” I replied. “He was a Liberal!”

“Yes he did!,” Jack retorted. “You know, about keep­ing money in people’s pockets.”

Later I looked it up and sent it to him, because of course he was right, and Churchill’s words ring as true now as when Churchill spoke them, in the House of Com­mons on 16 August 1945, although they have tem­porar­ily fallen out of favor:

What noble oppor­tu­ni­ties have the new Gov­ern­ment inher­ited! Let them be wor­thy of their for­tune, which also is the for­tune of us all. To release and lib­er­ate the vital springs of British energy and inven­tive­ness, to let the hon­est earn­ings of the nation fruc­tify in the pock­ets of the people….

In Jan­u­ary Jack Kemp announced that he had been diag­nosed with can­cer. He said he was under­go­ing tests but gave no other detail. Scarcely four months later he was gone. Imme­di­ately I thought of the words Churchill offered, as only he could, quot­ing from Adam Lind­say Gordon’s grand poem “The Last Leap,” upon the death of his dear­est friend, Lord Birken­head:

The sum­mons which reached him, and for which he was equally pre­pared, was of a dif­fer­ent order. It came as he would have wished it, swift and sud­den on the wings of speed. He had reached the last leap in his gal­lant course through life. All is over! Fleet career, Dash of grey­hound slip­ping thongs, Flight of fal­con, bound of deer, Mad hoof-thunder in our rear, Cold air rush­ing up our lungs, Din of many tongues.

Oddly too, remem­ber­ing the rapid­fire way Jack lived and spoke and thought, I thought of another fig­ure in a galaxy far away, the immor­tal Tazio Nuvolari, the great­est rac­ing dri­ver who ever lived. In Man­tua, Italy, where pass­ing dri­vers in the Mille Miglia would raise a hand in mute salute as they raced through “Nivola’s” home town, his tomb­stone bears this epi­taph: Cor­rerai ancor piu veloce per le vie del cielo. You will travel faster still upon the high­ways of heaven.

God­speed, Jack.

Be Socia­ble, Share!

• 

Tagged as: Alan Keyes, Atlantic Charter, Bahamas, Buffalo Bills, Colin Powell, Eleuthera, Jack Kemp, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Lady Thatcher, Lincoln, Merry Alberigi, Mille Miglia, Tazio Nuvolari, USS Winston S. Churchill