The Happy Warrior

WHO SAYS you can’t turn back the clock? In November 1993, an elegant heiress named Christine Todd Whitman ran for governor of New Jersey on a platform of Republican golden oldies: a neo—Kemp-Roth 30 per cent cut in the state income tax, choice in education, and a promise to reduce state spending by squeezing out waste, fraud, and abuse. Liberal commentators like Eleanor Clift of Newsweek and Al Hunt of the Wall Street Journal predicted victory for the incumbent governor, Jim Florio, who noisily congratulated himself for his courage in raising income taxes. Mr. Florio’s re-election would ring the death knell of supply-side economics. Instead, Mrs. Whitman won handsomely—carrying, interestingly, 30 per cent of the black vote, largely because of her pro-private-school message. For romantic Reaganites, happy days were here again.

Nobody took more pleasure from the Whitman victory than the man who wants to repeat her campaign on a national scale, Jack Kemp, Mr. Supply-Side.

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David Frum

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WHO SAYS you can’t turn back the clock? In November 1993, an elegant heiress named Christine Todd Whitman ran for governor of New Jersey on a platform of Republican golden oldies: a neo—Kemp-Roth 30 per cent cut in the state income tax, choice in education, and a promise to reduce state spending by squeezing out waste, fraud, and abuse. Liberal commentators like Eleanor Clift of Newsweek and Al Hunt of the Wall Street Journal predicted victory for the incumbent governor, Jim Florio, who noisily congratulated himself for his courage in raising income taxes. Mr. Florio’s re-election would ring the death knell of supply-side economics. Instead, Mrs. Whitman won handsomely—carrying, interestingly, 30 per cent of the black vote, largely because of her pro-private-school message. For romantic Reaganites, happy days were here again.

Nobody took more pleasure from the Whitman victory than the man who wants to repeat her campaign on a national scale, Jack Kemp, Mr. Supply-Side.