Jack Kemp
The Bleeding-Heart Conservative Who Changed America
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Narrated by:
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Morton Kondracke
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Fred Barnes
About this listen
"The purpose of politics is not to defeat your opponent as much as it is to provide superior leadership and better ideas than the opposition." (Jack Kemp)
The late 1970s were miserable for America. It was the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate era, a time of high unemployment, ruinous inflation, gasoline lines, communist advances, and bottomed-out US morale. In the 1980s, it all turned around: "Stagflation" ended and nearly two decades of prosperity ensued. The Soviet Union retreated, then collapsed. America again believed in itself. And around the world, democratic capitalism was deemed "the end of history".
Ronald Reagan’s policies sparked the American renaissance, but the Gipper’s leadership is only part of the story. The economic theory that underpinned America’s success was pioneered by a star professional quarterback turned self-taught intellectual and "bleeding-heart conservative": Jack Kemp.
Kemp’s role in a pivotal period in American history is at last illuminated in this first-ever biography, which also has lessons for the politics of today. Kemp was the congressional champion of supply-side economics - the idea that lowering taxes would foster growth. Even today, almost no one advocates a return to a top income tax rate of 70 percent. Kemp didn’t just challenge the Democratic establishment. He also encouraged his fellow Republicans to be growth (not austerity) minded, open their tent to minorities and blue-collar workers, battle poverty and discrimination, and once again become "the party of Lincoln". Kemp approached politics the same way he played quarterback for the Buffalo Bills: With a refusal to accept defeat. Yet he also was incapable of personal attack, arguing always on the level of ideas. He regarded opponents as adversaries, not enemies, and often cooperated with them to get things done. Despite many ups and downs, including failed presidential and vice-presidential bids, he represented a positive, idealistic, compassionate Republicanism. Drawing on never-published papers and more than one hundred Kemp Oral History Project interviews, noted journalists Morton Kondracke and Fred Barnes trace Kemp’s life, from his childhood through his pro football career, to his influential years as a congressman and cabinet secretary.
As the American Dream seems to be waning and polarized politics stifles Washington, Kemp is a model for what politics ought to be. The Republican party and the nation are in desperate need of another Kemp.
©2015 Morton Kondracke and Fred Barnes (P)2015 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Jack Kemp was the most forward-looking, open-hearted, big-tented Republican of our time (save, perhaps, Ronald Reagan). In this beautifully written biography, Morton Kondracke and Fred Barnes capture the energy, optimism, intellectual fire, and social conscience of this fascinating man." (Charles Krauthammer, author of Things That Matter)
"Jack Kemp was my mentor, and he inspired a whole generation of conservatives to think big. In this book, Mort Kondracke and Fred Barnes write with the same infectious energy that Jack had. Jack taught Republicans to speak to people’s aspirations, and this is the story of how he did it. Anyone who wants to spark an ‘American Renaissance’ should read this book." (Rep. Paul Ryan [R-WI])
"I’ve long admired what Jack Kemp represented as an American statesman: the idea that reasonable people can come together, in spite of their differences, to advance policies that make America better. I was deeply touched by Jack’s personal interest in my own work, and I consider him a friend and a teacher. I hope more people are able to learn the lessons he helped teach me." (Senator Cory Booker [D-NJ])
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- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Nothing to Fear brings to life a fulcrum moment in American history - the tense, feverish first 100 days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency, when he and his inner circle completely reinvented the role of the federal government.
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Important contribution
- By R.S. on 03-05-09
By: Adam Cohen
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Bush
- By: Jean Edward Smith
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 25 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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In Bush, Jean Edward Smith demonstrates that it was not Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, or Condoleezza Rice, but President Bush himself who took personal control of foreign policy. Bush drew on his deep religious conviction that important foreign-policy decisions were simply a matter of good versus evil. Domestically, he overreacted to 9/11 and endangered Americans' civil liberties.
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Delusions of Competence
- By Rick on 11-18-16
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Why the Right Went Wrong
- Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond
- By: E. J. Dionne Jr.
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 20 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Why the Right Went Wrong offers a historical view of the right since the 1960s. Its core contention is that American conservatism and the Republican Party took a wrong turn when they adopted Barry Goldwater's worldview during and after the 1964 campaign. Since 1968, no conservative administration could live up to the rhetoric rooted in the Goldwater movement that began to reshape American politics 50 years ago.
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Outstanding, refreshing, inspiring
- By James Adams on 03-19-16
By: E. J. Dionne Jr.
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The Quiet Man
- The Indispensable Presidency of George H.W. Bush
- By: John H. Sununu
- Narrated by: Qarie Marshall
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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In this unique insider account, John H. Sununu pays tribute to his former boss - an intelligent, thoughtful, modest leader - and his overlooked accomplishments. Though George H. W. Bush is remembered for orchestrating one of the largest and most successful military campaigns in history - the Gulf War - Sununu argues that conventional wisdom misses many of Bush's other great achievements.
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Outstanding Biograpy
- By Warren Brookes on 07-25-15
By: John H. Sununu
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The Fierce Urgency of Now
- Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society
- By: Julian E. Zelizer
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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The Fierce Urgency of Now animates the full spectrum of forces at play during these turbulent years, including religious groups, the media, conservative and liberal political action groups, unions, and civil rights activists. Above all, the great character in the audiobook whose role rivals Johnson's is Congress - indeed, Zelizer argues that our understanding of the Great Society program is too Johnson-centric.
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Tip and the Gipper
- When Politics Worked
- By: Chris Matthews
- Narrated by: Chris Matthews
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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They were the political odd couple - the two most powerful men in the country, a pair who "couldn't be more different or more the same." For six years, Matthews was on the inside, watching the evolving relationship between President Reagan and Speaker of the House O’Neill. Drawing not only on his own remarkable knowledge but on extensive interviews with those closest to his subjects, Matthews brings this unlikely friendship to life in his unique voice.
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I didn't want it to end
- By Jim on 10-06-13
By: Chris Matthews
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Outsider in the White House
- Special Audio Edition
- By: Bernie Sanders, Huck Gutman, John Nichols - afterword
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett, Brian Sutherland
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Bernie Sanders' campaign for the presidency of the United States has galvanized supporters all over the country, drawing attention to issues of economic, racial, and social justice and spotlighting one of the most interesting and unconventional candidates in decades.
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Behind the Scenes with Bernie--- WORTH it!
- By Susie on 02-23-16
By: Bernie Sanders, and others
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Coolidge: An American Enigma
- By: Robert Sobel
- Narrated by: Charles Bice
- Length: 16 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Sobel instead exposes the real Coolidge, whose legacy as the most Jeffersonian of all twentieth-century presidents still reverberates today. Sobel delves into the record to show how Coolidge cut taxes four times, had a budget surplus every year in office, and cut the national debt by a third in a period of unprecedented economic growth.
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A Book Exciting As It's Subject!!!
- By Ted on 08-28-12
By: Robert Sobel
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Armageddon
- How Trump Can Beat Hillary
- By: Dick Morris, Eileen McGann
- Narrated by: Ian Patterson
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Timed for the critical presidential election season, New York Times best-selling author and noted political commentator Dick Morris provides a strategy and position on the issues for Republicans to attract crucial new voters to the party in order to win back the White House in 2016 and put an end to the Obama agenda of ruinous socialism. By using new issues, attracting new voters, and offering new alternatives, Republicans can win the election of 2016 and save America!
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Informative and practical a must read
- By quentin on 06-30-16
By: Dick Morris, and others
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Reagan
- The Life
- By: H. W. Brands
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 31 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Ronald Reagan today is a conservative icon, celebrated for transforming the American domestic agenda and playing a crucial part in ending communism in the Soviet Union. In his masterful new biography, H. W. Brands argues that Reagan, along with FDR, was the most consequential president of the 20th century. Reagan took office at a time when the public sector, after a half century of New Deal liberalism, was widely perceived as bloated and inefficient, an impediment to personal liberty.
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Very little about Reagan
- By Jack Merritt on 07-30-15
By: H. W. Brands
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The Price of Politics
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrated by: Boyd Gaines
- Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Based on 18 months of reporting, Woodward's 17th book The Price of Politics is an intimate, documented examination of how President Obama and the highest profile Republican and Democratic leaders in the United States Congress attempted to restore the American economy and improve the federal government's fiscal condition over three and one half years. The Price of Politics addresses the key issue of the presidential and congressional campaigns: the condition of the American economy.
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Making the Sausage
- By Graham on 10-18-12
By: Bob Woodward
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Into the Bright Sunshine
- Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights (Pivotal Moments in American History Series)
- By: Samuel G. Freedman
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 17 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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During one sweltering week in July 1948, the Democratic Party gathered in Philadelphia for its national convention. The most pressing and controversial issue facing the delegates was not whom to nominate for president—the incumbent, Harry Truman, was the presumptive candidate—but whether the Democrats would finally embrace the cause of civil rights and embed it in their official platform. On the convention's final day, Hubert Humphrey, the relatively obscure mayor of the midsized city of Minneapolis, ascended the podium.
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Civil Rights for All not just limited segments of society.
- By Patricia A Gustafson on 06-02-24