Stand for Something

by John Kasich

  It was, if memory serves, an awesome meeting—or, at least, it seemed as such from where I sat. The president listened patiently and with what I took to be great interest. When I was finished, he spun around in his big wooden chair and said, “Young man, what are your plans?”

  I wasn’t sure at first if he meant my plans regarding this particular matter, or my plans in general, and chose to assume the latter. “I’m not sure, sir,” I said. “As you know, I’ve only been in school here about a month, so I’m still undecided, but I’ve got to tell you, as I look around this office, I’m thinking this could be the job for me. What, exactly, does a university president do?”

  I was genuinely interested in what this man did for a living and how I might consider doing it myself. At that time in my life, I was hungry for insight into other people’s choices, other people’s careers—and I still am, I should mention. Anyway, I thought a big, impressive office would be just the thing, especially with the services of a secretary who so fiercely guarded my appointments calendar.

  Novice Fawcett seemed only too happy to talk about his career to a straightforward young gun like me. He told me about his academic responsibilities, and his fund-raising responsibilities, and his responsibilities with the school’s trustees and administrators. It all sounded very interesting and important. At some point, he mentioned that he was flying to Washington the next afternoon for a meeting with the President of the United States. It was October 1970, and Dr. Fawcett had been the only president of a major college or university to have endorsed Richard Nixon during the 1968 presidential campaign, and he was finally being invited to the White House for a brief meeting as a kind of public thank-you for his support.

  In October 1970, this struck me as about the most impressive thing I had ever heard, and I said as much. It was a big deal to the entire Ohio State community, I’m sure, but it was an even bigger deal to me. When you’re eighteen years old, and full of yourself and confident in your abilities, you tend to speak your mind a lot more freely than you might as a card-carrying adult. I even had the temerity to ask in on the adventure. I said, “Well, sir, I’ve got a number of things I would like to talk to him about as well. Do you think I could go with you, as a kind of student ambassador?”

  The president considered this for about a millisecond, and then without a trace of humor or kindness responded flatly: “No.”

  He wasn’t nasty about it, but he could clearly see no reason why one of his students would even ask such a thing and why he should have to consider it.

  “Well, how about this?” I continued, not willing to be put off. “How about if I went back to my dorm and wrote a letter and you could give it to President Nixon for me?”

  Dr. Fawcett thought for a while and probably figured there was no good reason to deny my quite reasonable request. He had never met me before, and apparently wasn’t in the habit of receiving students in his office, but he shrugged his shoulders and said, “I guess I could do that.”

  In retrospect, I realize this man could have easily tossed my letter in the trash and never followed through on his courier pledge and I never would have known the difference, but I took his consent to deliver my letter as tantamount to receiving an audience with the President of the United States. All of a sudden, I could not have cared a whit about the issues that had brought me to this office in the first place. All of a sudden, this unlikely opportunity to bend the President’s ear was all I could think about. I raced back to my room and wrote a letter—a letter that I firmly believed would be read by the President. When I ran out of things to say, I signed the note and offered to consult with the President at length on any matters, if he should require my insight. “P.S.,” I wrote, “if you’d like to discuss this letter further, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I’ll make myself available. I’m a college student. I’ve got time. I’ll come to you.”

  That was decent of me—wasn’t it?—to offer to go down to Washington to see the President on his own turf? I mean, if I was being really presumptuous, I would have suggested he drop by to see me next time he was on campus.

  MR. KASICH GOES TO WASHINGTON

  A couple weeks later, I opened my mailbox and found a return letter from the Office of the President of the United States, on official White House stationery. My heart raced, and I ripped into that envelope without a thought for saving it for posterity. Sure enough, President Nixon had written me back, telling me he found my letter intriguing and thoughtful and allowing that, indeed, he would like it very much if I could come to the White House to discuss these relevant matters further. He said that someone from his office would be in touch with me in the weeks ahead to make arrangements. I set the letter down feeling like I was on top of the world. His staff must have seized on my letter as a photo opportunity of some kind, a chance to show American voters that President Nixon took pains to keep in touch with America’s young people on the issues of the day, but all I could think at the time was that I had engaged the most powerful man on the planet, in such a way that he wanted to meet me and hear more.

  I thought, How great is this?

  First thing I did was head for the dormitory phone to call home. My mother answered on the first ring. “Mom,” I said, “I’m going to need an airline ticket. I’m going to have to fly to Washington to meet with the President of the United States, in the Oval Office.”

  Here again, I didn’t see any kind of absurdity or incongruity in this situation. It struck me as the most natural thing in the world, that I should have written a letter to President Nixon and that he should have responded in just this way, and I was so green and innocent it never occurred to me anyone else would see it any different. After all, it’s not like he was offering me a job in his administration, or anything so far-fetched as that; it was just a meeting.

  The line went silent for a couple beats, and then I heard my mother shouting to my father. “Honey,” she called out, “pick up the phone. Something’s wrong with Johnny.”

  It’s funny—don’t you think?—that such a simple thing as winning an audience with an elected official should be regarded with distrust and disbelief. Something’s wrong with Johnny. We hear stories like this and reject them as incredible when they should be the order of the day. After all, why shouldn’t a president, or a congressman, or a university president make time in his or her busy schedule to meet every thoughtful voter or constituent or student who makes the time to seek him or her out on this or that issue? And yet it was difficult for my mother to conceive that an event of this magnitude had happened to her son. Yes, my parents had raised me to believe that anything was possible, but at the same time this was shocking. An audience with the President of the United States? Who could believe such a thing? But believe it we did, in time.

  The call from the White House finally came in on my dormitory phone. I was in the shower at the time, and the person who answered mistook the woman on the phone for my mother. “Hey Kasich!” he hollered into the bathroom. “It’s your old lady on the line!”

  I bundled out of the bathroom double-quick, a towel wrapped around my waist, not wanting to keep my mother waiting, only to find President Nixon’s personal secretary, Rosemary Woods, on the other end.

  I was on a plane to Washington soon after, so full of hope and ideas the plane might have listed to my side of the aisle. I was excited, but calm. Perhaps it was the mailman’s son in me, but I had a sheet with directions on it, and a letter of introduction from someone on the President’s staff, and I held on to these pieces of paper the entire way there. By the time I got to the visitor’s gate outside the White House they were so worn and crumpled from my tight-fisted clutching that they looked like something that had been retrieved from the trash, but I presented them to the guard like they were golden tickets. I announced myself: “I’m here for a meeting with the President.”

  I’ve since learned that our meeting—in December 1970—took place the same week as President Nixon’s now famous photo opportunity with E
lvis Presley, and when I made the connection I thought, How strange! To have been granted an audience with the President just a couple appointments away from his meeting with an American icon?

  They let me in soon enough. I was ushered to a reception area outside the Oval Office by some guy in a suit, after which some other guy in a suit came over and filled me in on the drill. He said, “Young man, you’re going to get five minutes alone with the President. He’ll be ready for you shortly.”

  I thought, Five minutes? I thought, This guy has got to be kidding! Of course, if I told any lobbyist or journalist or ranking politician that he or she was on the President’s calendar for five minutes of face-time, they’d be thrilled. But I wasn’t thrilled. No, sir. Far from it. I’d come all this way. My parents had spent all this money—money we didn’t really have to spare on such as this. I’d told all my friends. They were going to have to yank me out of this place, because I wasn’t leaving after five minutes.

  I was led into the Oval Office, and walked across that beautiful blue carpet with the seal of the United States of America, and it felt like I was walking across history. I thought of all the great world leaders who had trod on those very fibers, all the great decisions that had been made in this very room.

  The man in the suit made the introductions, stating the obvious: “Mr. President, John Kasich. John Kasich, the President of the United States.”

  I shook Richard Nixon’s hand and sat down across from him. Right at his desk. The same desk I had seen on the news. It was all so powerful, and immediate, and right there, and I had never before been inside such an important moment.

  And just what did I do, inside that important moment? I talked. I got a few things off my chest. And the President listened. He asked a couple questions, and I offered what I hoped weren’t perfunctory answers, and I figured if I just kept talking those five minutes would never quite come on the clock, and as I spoke I allowed myself to think I was making some kind of difference, bending the ear of the leader of the free world on issues that were of profound importance—to me, anyway. It became clear as I talked that he was taking the opportunity to gauge the mood on college campuses, just seven months removed from the shootings at Kent State, but I didn’t dwell on his agenda. What mattered to me was the opportunity.

  The good news is that meeting lasted about twenty minutes, which I counted as all the time in the world. Think of it: An eighteen-year-old college freshman, alone in the Oval Office with the most powerful man in the world for twenty minutes. Pretty incredible, don’t you think? The bad news is I would go on to spend eighteen years in Congress, and if you go back and add up all the time I spent alone in the Oval Office with various presidents you’ll see it doesn’t come close to those twenty minutes. I guess I peaked out at the age of eighteen. That’s when I should have retired.

  LOOKING AHEAD

  That trip to the White House, and a growing friendship with Novice Fawcett, set the tone for the balance of my four years at Ohio State—and, in many ways, for my future. I majored in political science, with an eye toward a career in law and government. That had always been the plan—although for a time in there, I’ll confess, it had been a fallback option. See, in addition to the priesthood, my other childhood goal was to be President of the United States, and as soon as I realized I liked girls too much to seriously consider a life of celibacy I looked to the White House. To be honest, I don’t remember giving public voice to such lofty dreams, but after a long political career I keep running into some of my old Buckeye friends who insist I used to introduce myself back at school by telling people I was going to be president someday. I don’t remember as much, and I don’t like how I come across in these retellings, but I have to consider the evidence. After all, I’ve heard this from several people over the years, so there must be something to it. I can only hope my fellow students didn’t dismiss me back then as some sort of pompous idiot, because my ambition was genuine. It might have been a bit premature, and perhaps even a couple inches out of reach, but it was certainly genuine, and so I set about it, using that White House meeting as an all-important springboard to a series of wonderful summer jobs and internships in Washington leading up to my graduation.

  If I have any regrets about my academic career, it’s that I never went to law school, because I think it would have helped me enormously in government, but I followed my heart rather than my head and succumbed to the lure of politics. Upon graduation, I stumbled upon a job as an intern in the Ohio legislature, where I would work for several years, soon enough as a Republican aide. In short order, I became convinced that I could be a member of the legislature, and got it in my head to challenge an incumbent in my district named Robert O’Shaughnessy. I was twenty-four years old, and after only a year or two as a legislative aide I’d convinced myself that I could do a better job than any of the folks in elected office. Understand, this was pie-in-the-sky stuff, and Republican officials were fairly stunned by my decision to run against such a formidable opponent. I had no money, no campaign team, no name recognition, no support, and no office. And, once I stepped down from my post as an aide in the legislature to focus on my campaign, I had no real paying job.

  To make matters even more intimidating, the O’Shaughnessy name was legendary in and around Columbus. There was a dam named after my opponent’s family. A local funeral home also bore his name. He had a brother who had served in the state senate. It was a regular dynasty. Robert O’Shaughnessy himself was the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and very much out in front in terms of support and name recognition and things of that nature. In fact, the guy was such a force that no credible Republican candidates seemed to want to step forward to challenge him, so the field was wide open. No one was that big a fool—except of course for me. I gave myself a two-year running start and had at it. I needed every hour of those two years to get my message across. I didn’t have the first idea how to go about running a campaign, but I didn’t let these things stop me. I just grabbed a phone book and started making some calls, unleashing a tremendous grassroots effort and dragging Robert O’Shaughnessy into the fight of his political life—eventually attracting good people like Don Thibaut to my campaign, because they were impressed with my hard work and willingness to take on any battle.

  Now, I should mention here that I got married soon after graduation—to my first wife, Mary Lee, who was tremendously supportive of my decision to seek office. But I was so consumed by the campaign and my new job as a candidate that we were soon like two ships passing in the night, a prescription for disaster in any marriage. What it came down to, really, was time: I’d set things up so that I didn’t have any. Plain and simple, I neglected my marriage. I did not tend to the garden, or work diligently at whatever nurturing metaphor you care to slot in here, because I was too busy trying to get a toehold in the legislature. Fortunately, there were no children involved, and we could both read the handwriting on the wall clearly enough to recognize we were headed down the wrong road, so we parted friends and went our separate ways.

  And so, let me be perfectly clear: If you’re looking for the pure individual who practices what he preaches, who never makes mistakes, who has no recognizable failings or shortcomings or deep, dark secrets . . . you won’t find him here. I’m human, same as everyone else. Sometimes I get it right, and sometimes I don’t, and most times I’m able to catch myself in time to set things right. Hopefully, I learn from my missteps and don’t repeat them.

  In any case, my poor mother was devastated when I filed for divorce; she was so morally and philosophically opposed to it that I think she would have had an easier time of it if I’d told her I’d robbed a bank, but I hadn’t robbed a bank so she had to find it in her heart to forgive me. And she did, just as I have found it in my heart to forgive myself—for being young, and rash, and totally unprepared for the full-time commitment of marriage and family.

  Enough said.

  I was swallowed up by the campaign, and because I gave myself a
two-year head start, for a time in there I didn’t know if I could make ends meet. I can still remember being pulled over for speeding in the small town of Worthington, Ohio, and as the police officer came to the car I emptied my pockets in a gesture intended to pull some sympathy and maybe get off with just a warning. I told the police officer who I was, and that I was running for state senate. I presented him with my driver’s license, and a quarter, which was all the money I could find in my wallet or my pockets. I said, “Officer, if you give me a fine you may put an end to my campaign because this is all I’ve got.”

  (No doubt I carried the quarter on my mother’s good counsel, on the sound thinking that if my car broke down I’d at least be able to call someone for help. And I must have caught the cop on a good day, because he let me off with just a warning.)

  It really was a shoestring operation—a lot like starting a small business and putting everything you have into it and hoping for the best, only here my hope for the best wasn’t for myself alone. I truly felt that the time had come for a change, and that I was the man for the job. Had there been another, more experienced, better-backed Republican candidate, I might have determined that he or she was more suited to it, but there was no one else. The fighter in me could not let this guy go unchallenged.

  A word or two on that fighter in me: I had been a small, scrappy kid. Even as an adult, I check in on the short side of most weight charts. I was taught to work twice as hard as the next guy, often to get half as far, and I am reminded here of those long summer afternoons playing baseball up at the schoolyard. We’ve all experienced those afternoons, right? Running around in the hot sun, lapping at the water from the nearest garden hose like it was a little piece of heaven. I was one of the smaller kids, so I got in the habit of running my mouth off a bit in order to be taken seriously. That’s where I think I got my argumentative streak, on the ball field. I never gave up on an argument. When I thought the ball was out, and everyone else thought the ball was fair, and it was the bottom of the last inning and we were about to lose the game, and we had been playing the game for hours and hours . . . well, I just wouldn’t give in, the same way I wouldn’t give in on this race for the state senate.