Back in the 1980’s I looked upon Congressman Jack Kemp as something of a hero. He had an infectious enthusiasm for ideas that was very attractive to a young conservative looking for ways to translate Ronald Reagan’s electoral success into true conservative governance. He may be the only Congressman in history who could make a speech about tax and budget policies interesting.

Blessed with a soaring optimism and sunny disposition, he could be called the ideological grandfather of “The Ownership Society” that President Bush is trying to enact. He proposed what at the time were radical ideas involving “Enterprise Zones” in the inner cities where investment would be encouraged by lowering taxes and eliminating regulations. As Secretary for Housing and Urban Development he pushed for public housing residents to own their units and set up co-ops to govern those housing projects.

In 1993, he started Empower America with William Bennett that seeks to promote capitalism and freedom while reforming tax policy and social security. And in 1996, he was the Vice Presidential candidate when Bob Dole made his run for the White House.

Couple that impressive resume with his experience as a Hall of Fame pro football quarterback and you have someone that was easy to look up to and admire.

And that’s why the news brought to us via Michelle Malkin is so depressing:

Jack Kemp, the businessman, was recently negotiating a highly questionable billion-dollar oil deal with Venezuela’s Chavez. Kemp stood to make up to $50 million in commissions….

Kemp made high-profile “courtesy” visits and wined and dined with Hugo Chavez and his ministers in 2002. Weeks later, a contract dated Jan. 17, 2003, was circulated between Free Market Petroleum, where Kemp is chairman, and the Chavez government. That Kemp, the GOP’s 1996 vice presidential nominee, even would consider doing business with the Chavez government raises troubling ethical and political questions…..

Kemp has used his political capital to open doors for Chavez. In May of 2003, he tried to charm the staff of The Wall Street Journal editorial page into abandoning its opposition to Chavez’s undemocratic behavior.

I had also missed this little tidbit of information that Michelle relates:

Jack Kemp has been getting quite a bit of attention lately for his relationship with Samir Vincent, a secret agent of Saddam Hussein who was recently convicted in the United Nations oil-for-food scandal.

When you discover your hero has feet of clay it’s almost like being told again that there’s no Santa Claus. There’s disappointment, a sense of personal betrayal, and a great, heavy sadness that weighs upon the mind. You ask yourself how you could have been taken in by someone who clearly has betrayed some of the most cherished beliefs about supporting freedom he held those many years ago.

And then you realize it’s not so much your hero has feet of clay it’s that he’s a human being. And humans, being the complex creatures that we are, sometimes fall short of the high expectations we set for them. It doesn’t make them evil, it simply reveals them for what they really are; a flawed representation of the image you projected onto him.

Folk artist Suzanne Vega wrote a song about this phenomena entitled “When Heroes Go Down”

When heroes go down
They go down fast
So don’t expect any time to
Equivocate the past

I heard you say
You look out for the feet of clay
That someone will be falling next
Without the chance
For last respects
You feel the disappointment

We’ll always have heroes. And as surely as there is no Santa Claus, some will end up making us wish we’d never heard of them.

Cross-Posted at Blogger News Network