A grown-up in the room
In a GOP presidential field where bombast is in full flower, Governor John Kasich of Ohio is texturally and tonally different. Make no mistake: He’s a conservative. But as a swing-state governor, he’s a pragmatic, results-oriented executive, not a to-the-ramparts ideologue.
He’s also a combination of contradictory qualities and impulses, some of which were on display during a freewheeling Boston Globe editorial board interview on Wednesday. A candid, engaging conversationalist who stresses the need for collegiality, Kasich can, under close questioning, become brusque, bordering on bristly. A political doer who stresses the importance of compromise on many matters, he’s dug dogmatically in on others.
Kasich, a nine-term congressman (1983-2001) who took a mid-career respite from public office before being elected governor of Ohio in 2010, says politics is now much more vitriolic.
“One of the things that shocked me when I became governor was the level of partisanship,” the 63-year-old said, offering a Gen X-ish apostrophe: “I mean, it was just, like, mind-boggling to me.” As a House member, he said, “I did stuff with Ron Dellums.” Coverage from that era confirms that Kasich did indeed team up with then-Representative Dellums, a self-described socialist from California, in opposition to the B-2 Stealth bomber.
Reeling off a list of issues Republicans want to address—immigration, Social Security, entitlements, the budget, Obamacare, the border—Kasich noted that “you can’t do these things unless you get some buy-in from the other party … . And that’s what’s really changed: the tenor and the ability of people to work together.”
As House Budget Committee chairman, Kasich said, he took pains not just to let Democrats be heard, but also to let them win on some budgetary matters so they would feel like respected participants in a worthwhile process.
Mind you, as Kasich himself will tell you, he supported the 1995 government shutdown then House Speaker Newt Gingrich forced over fiscal issues. Today, however, he’s cautioned against the road-to-nowhere brinksmansip that Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, and Ben Carson, among others, have urged as part of the GOP’s effort to defund Planned Parenthood.
Enter, stage right, Kasich’s contradictory qualities. Asked if the support he voiced for George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, which occurred after he had left Congress, made him complicit in what he now considers a mistake, Kasich quickly conjugated himself from congenial to contrary.
“That’s a real leap,” he scoffed. “I’m not even going to respond to that.”
A similarly peremptory tone came when he was pushed on gun control, a discussion he tried to end this way: “Look, man, let me explain: I’m for the Second Amendment.”
Still, as the spirited back-and-forth drew to a close, Kasich declared that he’d enjoyed himself.
Me too. Even if you disagree with him on most things, Kasich is someone you can respect as a political grown-up.
Most of the time, anyway.