Stand for Something

by John Kasich

  PERSISTENCE PAYS

  Sure enough, there were a handful of other Republican candidates who emerged as the election grew near, but there was no one with any real experience or any real shot at winning—not that I had any either. So I kept at it. For nearly two straight years, seven days a week, sometimes around the clock, I kept pecking away at Robert O’Shaughnessy. I took time off to sleep, and that was it. I drove a red Chevette at the time, and I practically lived in it. The back seat was littered with campaign literature and fast food wrappers and a change of clothes, although most of the time the change of clothes had already been put to use, which meant there was usually just a small pile of laundry. If I wasn’t in somebody’s home pitching my candidacy, I was at a rally or a press conference or a community event of some kind. Or I was going door-to-door, or cold-calling on the phone, or trapping fliers beneath the windshield wipers of parked cars at the local mall. The 15th was a fairly big district back in those days, with over 300,000 people, which meant I had to knock on a whole lot of doors, but that’s just what I did.

  The cold calls were interesting. Few people were doing that kind of thing—and certainly no one in Ohio. I wrote my own script, and tried to stick to it. I didn’t have volunteers making the calls or visits on my behalf, at least not in the beginning. I just pulled a number from the phone book, or knocked on the door of the next house down the street, and introduced myself. “Hi,” I’d say. “My name’s John Kasich, and I’m running for state senate in two years.” Then I set about earnestly and aggressively pitching my message.

  And somehow, in the doing, folks sparked to my campaign. Money started to come in. Volunteers started to sign on. At some point, Republican Party leaders began to smell that I could actually win this thing, so they started throwing some money and support my way as well, and when Robert O’Shaughnessy finally looked up and began to take me seriously I was at mile 25 of our 26.2 mile marathon, and he was gasping for air back at mile 23. He had no idea how many miles I’d run, how much work I’d put in, how much support I’d gained along the way. If he’d thought about me at all, it was very likely as a joke. I was just a kid. When he finally saw me as a real threat, there was no time to catch up.

  Election night was pure pandemonium. The weekend before the election, the local newspapers had some flattering things to say about my campaign and about my potential, but none of the pundits figured I could pull it off. In fact, they all thought I would lose by a significant margin. The O’Shaughnessy name was too tough to beat, they all said. As it played out, though, the election wasn’t even close. I ended up with better than 56 percent of the vote, a giant margin in a contest like this—and a stunning victory. Took the entire state by surprise to where some folks started calling it the biggest upset in the history of the Ohio legislature. Took poor O’Shaughnessy by surprise, too, and caught him napping. To many people, it was as stunning as when Buster Douglas (another Columbus underdog) knocked out Mike Tyson for the heavyweight title. It was wonderful. My parents couldn’t have been more proud. To them, it was another rung on that ever-reaching ladder of success. I had climbed higher than any Kasich before me, higher than my coal miner grandfather could have ever imagined.

  Granted, all I’d gotten for all that climbing was a thankless elected position that paid a mere $17,500—but to me, just then, that was all the money I needed. Heck, it was all the money in the world, but it wasn’t about the money. The good guys don’t go into politics to get rich or famous. They do it to make a difference, and I counted myself as one of the good guys. I was out to make a difference. To matter. To stand for something.

  And I was determined to keep my promises, which meant making some noise right away. Don Thibaut became my top aide and he remains a close confidant, and together we hit the ground running. I learned how to work with other people. I learned how to get things done in a two-party system. I learned how to compromise when appropriate, and how to form alliances. I learned how to communicate with my constituents. And I learned how to write a budget. When my own party decided to raise taxes, I wrote my own budget that addressed the fiscal problems of the state and allowed me to avoid breaking one of my chief campaign promises—namely, an unwillingness to raise taxes. It angered my new colleagues, and I got slaughtered with it, but that didn’t bother me. In fact, I was just pleased that I had a chance to present it. (Indeed, many of my provisions were eventually enacted, which I took as a silver-lining-type compliment.) It was the only budget I ever wrote in the legislature, but it would begin a pattern of going out on my own limb and crunching my own numbers that I would continue in the U.S. House of Representatives.

  Very quickly, I earned a reputation as someone who didn’t play by any fixed set of rules. My new colleagues didn’t quite know what to make of me. First time I stood up in the caucus and made an impassioned speech about some issue or other one of the state senators took me aside afterward and said, “Put a little mustard on that hot dog, Senator”—meaning, I guess, that I had a flair for the melodramatic. The message from my own party, early on, was that I was “irresponsible,” which is the word that gets tossed around when you refuse to go along with the establishment. I was irresponsible because I broke from the party to present my own budget. I was irresponsible because I voted my conscience over the party line. I was irresponsible because I eschewed favoritism and cronyism and isms of every stripe. I was irresponsible because I turned back a proposed pay raise that was presented during one of my first sessions, because that had been one of my campaign promises.

  There I was, meaning to keep my word, and the legislature went and voted itself a pay raise, so I refused the money. It was a $5,000 raise, so it was more than just a token gesture; it was significant money, especially when set against my $17,500 starting salary, and I had to jump through all kinds of hoops just to refuse it. I even had to pay taxes on it—and, of course, to shoulder the disdain of my fellow senators who didn’t quite know what to make of this brash young kid who seemed determined to make them look bad in the eyes of their constituents by turning back what may or may not have been a deserved pay raise. I did this more than once, actually—and you have to realize, it wasn’t a one-time bump in pay. It was $5,000 every year, so it ran to a lot of money. I started to worry that people might think me stupid for turning back all that money; heck, I started to think I might be stupid for turning back all that money, but I stuck to my principles. Even when I got to Congress, and my new colleagues voted themselves a raise of their own, I refused it. I wouldn’t be one of those “vote no and take the dough” officials. I meant to keep my word—only after eight years of giving back all this money, and paying all these excess taxes, it seemed a little besides the point. I kept voting against the raises, but I finally stopped refusing them, because I realized I was beating my head against the wall. Nobody seemed to care except me, so I moved on to something else.

  All of which takes me in a not-so-roundabout way to the front porch of my career in government, which eventually included nine terms as a U.S. congressman and an uplifting but ultimately unsuccessful run for the 2000 Republican Party presidential nomination that eventually went to George W. Bush. It was uplifting to me, anyway, and I took great satisfaction from the fact that no one dismissed me out of hand. No one laughed. Little Johnny Kasich, from McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, throwing his hat into the biggest ring in the free world, and it was all within reach: a lifelong dream, close enough to taste. I might never have been anything more than a long shot, and I might have run through my meager campaign fund before the first primary, but I attracted some good people to the effort. In fact, Ed Gillespie, who went on to become the chairman of the Republican National Committee, was my press secretary. Ed Goeas was my pollster, and he’s one of the best in the business. Don Fierce, the noted Republican strategist who actually talked me into running in the first place, and Karen Johnson, a high-ranking political veteran, also signed on to the effort—which I took as a great barometer.

  ON MY WAY


  I set out these backstories for the way they signal what I’m about, what motivates me, what it’s taken for me to get things done and make a difference. Too, I set them out for the way they show how things were, up against how things have become. And I set them out for the way they remind me never to get too full of myself, or to take too terribly much for granted or forget where I’ve come from, because bundled up and taken together these are the things that define me. This is who I’ve strived to be—and how I’ve gone about some of that striving.

  That said, this book is not intended as political memoir. It is not an autobiography. It is, however, deeply personal. It’s a think piece on what’s ailing America, and yet it’s not one of those conservative manifestos we’ve lately seen filling our bookstore shelves, even though if I had to categorize some of my views along the spectrum of social commentary I’d allow that I’m more right than left, more traditional than contemporary, more red than blue. I don’t mean to start a partisan dialogue in these pages so much as to generate a free-flowing discussion on the state of our union, and to do so effectively I believe I need to bring myself to the table. That’s where it gets personal. The societal drift I wrote of earlier doesn’t recognize party lines; the values that have done their level best to define me are not the exclusive domain of a former Republican congressman from one of our fly-over states; and the outrage I’ll voice at the greed, corruption, cynicism, sloth, and duplicity plaguing our American institutions is not mine alone, even if it comes from that deeply personal place.

  Honesty, integrity, personal responsibility, faith, humility, accountability, compassion, forgiveness . . . these are our American values, our common denominators, and in the pages ahead I’ll offer my take on how to reclaim them and set them loose once again in the areas of politics, business, education, religion, sports, and popular culture.

  Here goes . . .

  3

  TAKING A STAND ON GOVERNMENT

  “Politics is not an end, but a means. It is not a product, but a process. It is the art of government. Like other values it has its counterfeits. So much emphasis has been placed upon the false that the significance of the true has been obscured and politics has come to convey the meaning of crafty and cunning selfishness, instead of candid and sincere service.”

  Calvin Coolidge

  I’ll open this one with a caution and a story. First, the caution: This is not intended to be a political book. It’s a book about how we live and work and think, and how we might do a better job of all three in order to make our country a better place. And it’s no autobiography, either, although I recognize that in order to make a compelling point I must sometimes offer an insight or example from my personal experience. For good or ill, I have lived a political life; most of my personal experience has been in and around government, so it’s only natural that a great many of my insights and examples will be pulled from this arena. It’s a little like stating the obvious, I know, but I mention it here at the outset because I don’t want readers to feel they’ve been duped into buying a partisan diatribe from some washed-up pol.

  Now, the story: I was having dinner with a group of people the weekend before the 2004 presidential election, which as you’ll recall was a polarizing time in this country. Everything was reduced to black and white—or, I should say, to red and blue. John Kerry was the devil incarnate to Republicans, and George Bush was the devil incarnate to Democrats, and there was no room in the debate to consider each man on his own merits, nor each issue on its face. It was as if the fate of the world hung in the balance. Leaders of each party whipped Americans into such a hyperventilated frenzy that otherwise intelligent Republicans started to believe that if Kerry won the White House America would cease to exist, while Democrats felt sure that if Bush retained the White House we were all doomed.

  And so it was in the eye of the storm of this blind partisanship that this dinner took place, and at one point during an otherwise pleasant evening a well-dressed, well-spoken, and presumably well-informed woman asked me what would happen if John Kerry won. The very thought was anathema to this concerned woman, that’s how stirred up she was over the election, so I looked at her and calmly said, “The country will be fine.”

  “What do you mean?” she shot back, aghast. She knew I was a Republican, and she knew I cared deeply about the future of this country, and I guess she thought I’d share her concern over the grim prospect of a Kerry administration. She couldn’t get that I was so calm over something as dire as this election—which, as we were endlessly reminded, was the mother of all elections.

  “Well,” I said, “the Republicans would still control the House and the Senate. The bench would slowly become more liberal. And there’d probably be less spending, because the Republicans would reject most of Kerry’s programs.”

  The woman looked at me like I had just given her permission to breathe a long sigh. “You mean it won’t be the end of America as we know it?” she said.

  “No, ma’am,” I assured her. “America will survive.”

  Then she thanked me profusely for setting her mind at ease, and told me how much better she felt, how much more hopeful, and I realized she might have been over the top but she wasn’t alone. There were a great many Americans out there who were moving to Canada over the outcome of that election, either way, because the campaign took on such a heated and heightened tone. It was more than just ugly—it was downright incendiary. Even the New York Times reported on Democrats suffering from post-election stress syndrome following Bush’s victory, complete with note and comment from area mental health professionals on how to cope over the next four years. I read that and thought (with at least a couple shades of sarcasm), Well, if the paper of record is weighing in on it, then it must be a certifiable phenomenon.

  No question, we were well manipulated into believing the 2004 presidential election was the most important election of our lifetime, which it may well have been, but we can be certain that when the 2008 election rolls around it will also be the most important election of our lifetime. And here’s a news flash: In 2012, it’ll be the same story all over again.

  Now, here’s another news flash for you—and this one troubles me even more than the last one: We haven’t seen middle ground for so long I’m no longer certain it still exists. I can’t help but think that the deepening divide between conservatives and liberals in this country can be traced to an alarming lack of backbone among our elected leaders. Yes, there are exceptions to every sweeping, alarmist statement I might make in these pages, but for the most part politicians today are more concerned with being politically correct than they are with being merely correct, and more likely to take a back seat than any kind of stand. More and more, our elected officials are accomplishing less and less—all because they have become so deathly afraid of offending any group or individual that they wind up doing nothing much at all but more of the same.

  WHY POLITICS MATTERS

  Before I go any further on this, I want to state for the record that our democratic form of government is the best thing going. Our Founding Fathers got it right, and within the framework of our democracy there is room for leadership and courage and vision and all those good things that make this country great and strong. Heck, we depend on leaders with courage and vision to keep us headed down the right road, but from time to time there’s a vacuum. From time to time, we find ourselves in a state of such profound drift we get to wondering if we’ll ever see our way to the other side, and these days we appear to be drifting. We’ve gotten to where it’s too difficult for our elected officials to go it alone, to make tough decisions, to reach across the aisle and develop friendships and alliances with members of the opposing party. It’s too difficult to fight the status quo. In fact, that’s become one of the most effective ways to move up in the leadership of your party—to become a party guy. Power for power’s sake. Obsession with reelection. The rising influence of special interests that keep otherwise honest politicians from taking an hon
est, objective view on a variety of issues. That’s the worst of politics, and it puts me in mind of the opening line of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities—“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”—and leaves me thinking we have to fumble through these bad patches until we find some firmer footing.

  The political pendulum swings back and forth in this country, and right now we’re at the troubling end of its arc. I’ve spent most of my adult life in politics and I’ve pretty much seen it all. The good, the bad, the downright ugly. What astounds me these days is how far we’ve veered off a principled course, how we’ve let things slip to where politics is no longer about doing good but about winning elections and destroying your opponent. Local politics, state politics, national politics . . . it’s all the same. The stakes might change as you move up the ladder; the headlines might get a little bigger and the falls from grace a little steeper, but at bottom our current political system is all about what stripes you wear and whose side you’re on and where your bread is buttered. Forgive, please, the tired metaphors but I can think of no better way to describe such a tired arrangement. Lately, I find myself cringing at the venom and vitriol that passes for spirited debate, and at the way our elected leaders seem unable to tolerate their fundamental differences. It’s gotten ugly.