Radio Derb’s obit for Jack Kemp, from last week’s broadcast:

We lost Jack Kemp this week, at the age of 73. Kemp was a sunny character who cheered us all up for a while. He was also a good and honorable man, who did his best for his party and his country.
His sunniness was unfortunately misplaced, though. David Frum caught the problem very nicely in his 1994 political classic Dead Right. Kemp is the leading character in Chapter 4 of David’s book, and the title of that chapter is: “Optimists: Wrong but Wromantic.” You couldn’t dislike Jack Kemp, or begrudge him praise for the energy he put into doing what he tried to do. Unfortunately it couldn’t be done, as Kemp was operating from wrong premises.
In Kemp’s world-view we are all rational actors. To improve the country, all that’s required is to import the profit motive, the efficiency and the un-ideological pursuit of plain self-interest that characterize the private sector, into government services. Enterprise zones! School vouchers! Sell public housing to the tenants! It all sounded so cheerfully reasonable.
But what if there’s no unfulfilled desire to start a business, and the only thing an enterprise zone does, is cause nearby businesses to relocate into it to save themselves taxes? What if pleasant suburban schools don’t want inner-city kids coming in on vouchers? What if the awful pathologies of the housing projects are not due to the fact that the tenants don’t own their apartments, but are due to something in the tenants themselves?
Policies based on wrong ideas about human nature are bound to fail, and Kemp’s policies duly did. Still, on a scale of political sins, having a too rosy view of your fellow citizens and their capabilites surely ranks as very minor sinfulness indeed. Wrong but Wromantic — David Frum nailed it. But hey, a little romanticism in political life isn’t such a bad thing, however wrong it turns out to be. Thanks for cheering us up, Jack.

The “Wrong but Wromantic” tag comes, by the way, from W.C. Sellar & R.J. Yeatman’s 1930 spoof-history classic 1066 and All That, staple reading for young teens in Her Majesty’s realms, where both David and I were raised. Here are the opening paragraphs of the relevant chapter.

Chapter 35
Charles I and the Civil War
With the ascension of Charles I to the throne we come at last to the Central Period of English History (not to be confused with the Middle Ages, of course), consisting in the utterly memorable Struggle between the Cavaliers (Wrong but Wromantic) and the Roundheads (Right and Repulsive).
Charles I was a Cavalier King and therefore had a small pointed beard, long flowing curls, a large, flat, flowing hat, and gay attire. The Roundheads, on the other hand, were clean-shaven and wore tall, conical hats, white ties, and sombre garments. Under these circumstances a Civil War was inevitable.

It has always seemed plain to me that Right and Repulsive trumps Wrong but Wromantic every time in reason, morality, and statecraft. Under universal suffrage, however, Wrong but Wromantic tends to walk off with all the electoral prizes, we of the Right and Repulsive brigade only being called in occasionally to clean up when the messes get too big and smelly to ignore.