Fast-growth Candidate

Other Presidential hopefuls have tried to sell themselves to the entrepreneur. Jack Kemp is the first to market entrepreneurship to the rest of the country.

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Around noon on Friday, January 18, 1985, Congressman Jack Kemp arrives with his family at San Francisco's Bohemian Club, near the city's financial district. Kemp is in town for two reasons. On Sunday, the San Francisco 49ers will trounce the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl XIX at Stanford Stadium, and Kemp will be in the grandstand rooting and cheering with old friends, as he has done at every other Super Bowl to date. But these days, Kemp can't while away entire weekends chatting about football strategy or reminiscing about his days as a Buffalo Bills quarterback. There are too many speeches to make, too many hands to shake, too many contributors to cultivate.

And today's appearance is an especially important one for Kemp, who is fast becoming one of the hottest political properties in America. For months, Republican strategists have been gleefully talking about a classic, two-man race between Kemp and Vice-President George Bush for the party's 1988 Presidential nomination. The Bohemian Club is a bastion of California's richest and most powerful white males, precisely the sort of corporate-bred, establishment conservatives Kemp must begin to win over in his drive for the Presidency. Sam Armacost, president of BankAmerica Corp., is there to meet him, as is Ben Biaggini, former chairman of Southern Pacific Co. and an influential GOP fundraiser. In all, there are 50 leading San Francisco businessmen and financiers seated in the club's front room when Kemp is introduced. They set down their coffee cups and applaud politely -- their attitude toward Kemp is decidedly chilly.

And why not? By the cultural, social, and intellectual standards of the Bohemian Club, Jack Kemp doesn't measure up. He has no Ivy League credentials, no experience on Wall Street or in a corporate boardroom. More distressing, he lacks a patrician bearing, lacks utterly the blend of wit, elegance, and grace that arises from a privileged life. He was a football player, a jock. And as he begins to speak, he reveals the urgent mannerisms of a self-made man -- his arms flail through the air, his voice rises insistently, and his words burst out like rounds from a machine gun. His ideas, too, are bold and unrefined. The title of his talk is "A New Entrepreneurial Era," and it is a speech filled with daring promises and challenges. He describes the 1980s as a "watershed" in American politics and economics, and he applauds the ascendance of a younger generation in the Republican Party. Defying the wisdom of Wall Street, he says that federal deficits don't keep him awake at night. He decries the Federal Reserve Board's inflation-fighting monetary policies. And he defends a tax plan that would strip away tax credits, deductions, and loopholes long cherished by his audience.

Yet as he speaks, a subtle and infectious change comes over the room. Maybe it is the way he uses the word "entrepreneur" where other politicians say "businessman," or the way he talks about "incentive" rather than "profit." Perhaps it is the way he rejects limits and suggests what is possible without them. But there is something happening to the audience. The idea of democratic capitalism, which for decades connoted the reactionary privileges of country-club Republicanism, is sounding good again. For so long, the men seated in the Bohemian Club today have watched their favored politicians -- even President Reagan -- squirm defensively when asked if an unfettered free-market society simply makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. Jack Kemp, though, is all offense. His magnetic presence and booming voice suggest a television preacher, a capitalist evangelical. Blacks, Hispanics, women, the entire. Third World -- everyone is invited to follow him to the new Republican Party.

And the audience is responding, shifting forward in their chairs -- how could they not?Are they not witnessing a conservative reincarnation of John F. Kennedy's New Frontier? Are they not hearing of a "rising tide that lifts all boats"? When Kemp is finished, they applaud loud and long. They smile and gather around him as he walks from the podium, shaking his hand and patting him on the back.

Kemp, too, is exhilarated. Receptions like this one in recent months have bolstered his credibility with skeptical mainstream Republicans. "Conservative populism" as Kemp is calling his platform these days, with its attacks on "corporate welfare" and the Federal Reserve, isn't easy for the Armacosts and Biagginis to swallow. And unlike Ronald Reagan, who met with similar skepticism in early campaigns, Kemp does not appear to be a man who could be easily molded in the Republican establishment's image. He is too feisty, too self-conscious about his modest class and cultural origins.

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