IN FROM THE COLD

By Michael Kramer

All through 1994, Jack Kemp traveled the country helping local Republican candidates while collecting chits for his own presidential bid, which he planned to make in 1996. In late October he was in Birmingham, Alabama. The overflow crowd had come to hear the most publicly irrepressible and optimistic G.O.P. politician since Teddy Roosevelt, and for a time, Kemp delivered as promised. His old football stories were laced with lessons: "I learned about the market's power when I was traded to the Buffalo Bills for $100." His tales recalled the Gipper's golden age: "The world changed because Ronald Reagan had the courage of his convictions." He didn't have to mention what everyone knew: Reagan had borrowed his beliefs from Kemp, the Elmer Gantry of supply-side economics.

The audience roared, but the self-described "bleeding-heart conservative" had something else to say. Forming fists with his words, Kemp thundered, "Republicans in California want to deny assistance to the children of illegal immigrants. They wouldn't even be able to go to school. Think about that. Is that what the party of Lincoln is about? We can't just welcome the less fortunate and minorities. We have to reach out to them. We are obliged to help them become like the rest of us in this room. It is not only the morally right thing to do," Kemp said quietly for emphasis. "It's the politically smart thing to do too."

Dumbstruck, the crowd stood mute. Afterward, Kemp slumped in a folding chair. For the first time in 25 years, I saw an incredible force depressed. "This isn't my party anymore," he brooded. "You saw it. They rejected the message. Without compassion, the party will have no future. And I won't either."

Three months later, pleading a distaste for fund raising, Kemp announced that he wouldn't run in '96 after all.

Now he's back, the beneficiary of desperation. Kemp will probably deny his private, pessimistic musings about Dole, the ones uttered to friends last spring, and denying them will be easy for him. Kemp long ago mastered an essential element of politics, the art of behaving as if no one has any memory. He will enthusiastically and repeatedly praise a man he has loathed, and preacher that he is, he may even come to believe what he says.

But before he was drafted last week, Kemp thought Dole was doomed. The Senator might have a chance if, say, Clinton were indicted in the Whitewater case, Kemp said last April. But short of that, victory seemed impossible. Kemp marveled at Dole's stamina but contended that the Senator was "old and tired in the ideas sense." And even if Dole believed in the kind of policies that could excite people, Kemp reasoned, Dole's legislative mind-set would probably cause him to "make a mess of it." Clinton, Kemp concluded, "will kill him."

But maybe not them. Kemp has the true believer's ability to sell. If he, rather than Dole, can be propelled to the forefront, maybe Clinton will expire instead. "But the No. 2s never get you much," Democratic patriarch Larry O'Brien once said, as he recalled the equally odd coupling of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson in 1960. "They can help some, as Lyndon did in Texas, and that's why you choose someone you can't stand. But in the end, it's the guy on top who carries you." Or doesn't.