Stand for Something

by John Kasich

  Industry-wide, the rap on video games is that they are excessively and gratuitously violent, that they promote the exploitation and denigration of women and minorities, and that they are slowly desensitizing our children to gang violence and school shootings and domestic abuse. I’m afraid the rap is justified. Top-selling titles like Grand Theft Auto are brutally graphic, with no redeeming social value, and I can’t for the life of me understand how any parent could allow such trash in his household. More than that, I can’t understand how the publishers of these games—most of whom are parents themselves—can look themselves in the mirror or find peace enough to sleep at night after marketing that kind of filth to children. (You can just forget about the daddy-cam concept keeping some of these individuals honest, because it’s apparent by their conduct that they couldn’t possibly care what their children think of them.) There’s even a game on the market called JFK Reloaded that invites participants to assume the role of Lee Harvey Oswald and re-create the assassination of President Kennedy. At the time of its launch, the company that makes and markets the game offered a cash prize to the player who most closely approximated the trajectories on the three shots fired by Oswald on November 22, 1963, as determined by the Warren Commission. I’m telling you, despicable doesn’t even begin to describe some of these things.

  Bobby Kotick can’t understand it either, and he steadfastly refuses to buy into it, so much so that he’s committed to only developing games that stay out of the gutter. He’s not so high-minded that he avoids shooting games entirely, and I’m sure there’s some small measure of blood and gore in his games intended for a more “mature” audience, but he won’t make or market these extreme-type titles. He won’t sink to that level. His thinking is, there’s enough money to be made selling positive images that he doesn’t need to traffic in that kind of garbage, and he’s willing to leave those ill-gotten gains to his competitors.

  Just this past Halloween, I saw an item in the paper about a costume manufacturer who was marketing a line of “pimp” and “ho” outfits to young children, and I thought once again of Bobby Kotick’s principled stand. Are we really so desperate to make money that we must peddle Halloween costumes glorifying prostitution to our children? It’s the crass limbo of the marketplace—how low can you go to make a buck?—and the refusal to play that game is what sets true business leaders like Bobby Kotick apart.

  Realize, Activision is a publicly traded company, and its chief executive is made to answer to a board and to investors, and in that kind of environment you can’t simply turn away from such a huge center of potential profits. If your competitors are doing it, there’s a certain amount of pressure on you to do the same. And yet, Bobby Kotick’s company has taken the higher road and performed fantastically well, posting annual net revenues of $1.4 billion, through licensing arrangements with family-friendly companies like Disney. Could Activision make even more money, publishing filth and poisoning the minds of our children and re-creating some of the darkest moments in American history? No doubt about it, but Bobby Kotick has taken a stand, and he’s managed to get an entire company to stand behind him.

  That’s something.

  WEIRTON STEEL

  It’s also something the way some of our top executives lead by shining example, and count themselves beholden to their colleagues, their employees, their shareholders, and their creditors—even when they don’t have to but for the way they were raised. Consider the rousing case of another friend, John Walker, who used to be the CEO of Weirton Steel, in Weirton, West Virginia. The backstory on Weirton Steel is that it was facing bankruptcy, and there was a provision in John’s contract that called for him to receive a one-time payment of approximately $1.3 million if certain conditions were met. When the company filed a voluntary petition to reorganize itself under Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, the Weirton board asked John to stay on, at which point the $1.3 million payment kicked in, but John couldn’t justify that kind of windfall. All around, people were losing their pensions, their health benefits, and in some cases their jobs, and he couldn’t stomach the thought that he could actually profit from their misfortune. Legitimate creditors were being made to line up to collect just a fraction of the monies they were rightfully due, so how could John sleep at night or look himself in the mirror if he walked away with $1.3 million he didn’t feel he’d earned?

  John Walker was a man of relatively modest means—at least in CEO circles. He didn’t have a whole lot growing up, and he didn’t have a whole lot more than he needed now that he had arrived at the top of his field, so the $1.3 million was meaningful. It was lifestyle-changing money to a guy like John, which made it all the more difficult to look away from it. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to accept it. Everyone he talked to—friends, lawyers, Weirton directors—told him to keep the money, that it was rightfully and contractually his, but it didn’t sit right, so he wrote a check for the full amount from his personal account and returned the money to the company.

  Realize, too, that John Walker wasn’t facing this dilemma alone. There was a Weirton CFO in a similar position, entitled by the same poison-pill-type clause in his contract to receive a payout of about $700,000, and he also wrote a check back to the company—and I mention this second moral act for the way it reinforces the first, and suggests once again that this type of behavior is catching.

  “It took my wife and me about fifteen seconds to decide that it was the right thing to do,” John Walker says now. “We had no choice but to give that money back. The company was filing for bankruptcy. All I had to do was look in the faces of people who were losing everything, and I knew that money wasn’t mine.”

  WHY CONSCIENCE MATTERS

  Happily, John Walker isn’t the only business leader with a conscience. In fact, I’m betting that most of our top executives would have acted in the same noble way. I’m particularly heartened when I read about business leaders who encourage employees at every level to take their own stands outside the workplace. At Timberland, the outdoor apparel company based in New Hampshire, corporate altruism runs so deep that management allows its workers a full week off each year, with pay, to help out local charities. Even better, the company offers four paid sabbaticals each year, which are put up for grabs to workers looking to sign on for up to six months to work for area nonprofit organizations. And—get this!—the company shuts down its entire operation for one day each year so that its 5,400 workers can participate in various company-sponsored philanthropic projects—at a cost to the company of nearly $2 million in lost sales, project expenses, and wages for workers, who all receive a full day’s pay. As a result, the spirit of volunteerism is so much a part of the culture at Timberland that employees wouldn’t have it any other way; 95 percent of them do additional volunteer work above and beyond the company-backed efforts, and most report that it was this focus on selflessness that attracted them to Timberland in the first place. For their part, Timberland executives are thrilled at the spillover impact its goodwill has contributed to the for-profit segment of its operation. “People like to feel good about where they work and what they do,” explains Timberland CEO Jeffrey Swartz.

  Yes they do.

  People also like it when their bosses deflect the credit when things go wonderfully right, and take the heat when they go horribly wrong. Accountability is key, and we need look no further than the executive offices at Johnson & Johnson, the pharmaceutical giant, to see a stirring example of same. I’m reaching back into our recent historical archives for this one, but it’s such a great story of an American business leader standing tall and doing the right thing in the face of real adversity that it rates a mention here. Remember the Tylenol tampering scare, back in 1982? It began in Chicago, when three people died from cyanide poisoning after taking Tylenol capsules. Soon, cyanide deaths linked to Tylenol were reported all across the country, and Johnson & Johnson chief operating officer James Burke made the swift decision to pull his product from the shelves and suspend all advertising
. We look back now and think there was no other move the company could have made, but at the time it was surely an agonizing decision, to recall millions of bottles of Tylenol, at an unfathomable cost to Johnson & Johnson, both in terms of lost revenues (estimated at more than $100 million) and a tarnished corporate reputation. It was the only moral decision facing Burke and his colleagues, but it was agonizing just the same.

  The real dilemma, Burke later said, was not whether or not to recall the Tylenol capsules, but how to protect Johnson & Johnson’s good name once consumers came to know Tylenol as a Johnson & Johnson product, and so he engaged a public relations firm to survey consumer attitudes toward the company and its products in the wake of these cyanide-tampering incidents. He authorized a straightforward series of television and print advertisements intended to assure loyal customers that Johnson & Johnson was doing everything in its power to ensure that its products were safe and tamper-resistant. And he opened his doors to the media and made sure the press was fully informed on every aspect of the crisis, even when it was discovered that the cyanide had come from a quality assurance factory located next door to the Tylenol manufacturing facility.

  In all, Burke’s worldwide withdrawal of his product from the marketplace and his absolute candor helped to save his company from disaster, and now, nearly twenty-five years later, the response of the Johnson & Johnson board continues to stand as a model in corporate crisis control.

  Too often, it seems, companies in crisis look to backpedal, or obscure the facts to paint their efforts in the best possible light, and it feels a little disingenuous for me to be praising the folks at Johnson & Johnson for merely doing what was right and expected on this one—and yet there’s no denying how difficult it must have been, to act with such responsibility and integrity in the face of such a devastating development regarding one of the company’s most popular and profitable products. But that’s just it. It’s not always easy to do the right thing, and still we have no choice but to try.

  “Business is a morally serious enterprise, in which it is possible to act either immorally or morally,” writes Michael Novak in his book Business As a Calling: Work and the Examined Life. “By its own internal logic and inherent moral drive, business requires moral conduct.”

  Novak has got it right: Business is a calling. It’s not just about making money, and returning a profit to your investors. It’s about building a life—not just for yourself and your own family, but for your colleagues, and employees, and their families as well. It’s about making choices, and we all have a choice on this one. We can align ourselves with people like Bobby Kotick, and companies like Johnson & Johnson, and put our shoulder to the wheel and preserve free markets and free enterprise as the jewels they ought to be—or we can side with the Kenneth Lays and Dennis Kozlowskis and take the easy road that can only lead to despair and ruin. It’s up to us to decide which team we want to play for, the good guys or the bad guys, both as leaders and as consumers. What legacy do you want to leave? It’s astounding to me, the number of people who look to cheat the system, even as these cases are made on these falls from grace, and yet I have to believe that over time our ethical business leaders will once again predominate.

  Let us put conscience and ethics ahead of profits. Let us demand limited government interference in our free market system, and let us justify that demand by policing ourselves. Let us reinvigorate our capital system and leave it renewed for our children. Let us set temptation aside, and vow not to take any shortcuts to any short-term gains. Let us remind ourselves that our reputations are precious, and that when we disgrace ourselves in business, as in everything else, we also disgrace our families, our friends, and our associates. And let us never forget that in business, as elsewhere, the right thing to do is the only thing to do, and know that until the John Walkers of the world start getting more attention than the Bernie Ebberses I’ll be out here sounding the call and shining positive light wherever I can find it.

  And I’ll be trusting you to do the same.

  6

  TAKING A STAND ON RELIGION

  “Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.”

  Ronald Reagan

  I read the Bible. I travel with one, in fact, and there’s never a time that I don’t have a page or a passage bookmarked or flagged for my ready reference. Why? Because the Bible always has something new to teach me, some new way to look at the world, some ancient story that can’t help but resonate in interesting ways against the backdrop of our times. Plus, it’s the greatest story ever told. Greed and charity, ruin and redemption, misery and hope . . . it’s all right there. It’s accessible, and at the same time it’s beyond knowing, and I can’t for the life of me figure how anyone gets along without it.

  Do I read it all the time? No, of course not. Do I quote from it constantly, like some Bible-thumping preacher, or use it as a crutch to explain away my transgressions? Once again, no and no. But I keep a copy close at hand and every time I read it I discover something I didn’t know before. About myself. About these rich and complex people whose actions have echoed for centuries. About the human condition. About faith.

  You see, faith is a curious and wonderful thing, and we live in curious and wonderful times—and this is especially significant when it comes to matters of religion. On the one hand, the pendulum has swung back in recent years to where it’s okay for our leaders to openly express their religious views. It’s become almost obligatory for our politicians to wear their faith on their sleeves, and I’m not so sure this is a good thing. It’s an interesting thing, no question, and it puts faith on the map for a whole lot of people, but I wonder if it encourages some candidates to go to church as a photo opportunity; I wonder if they’re just going through the motions and setting the wrong kind of example for those of us who consider these things deeply.

  On the other hand, the rest of us are still playing our faith close to the vest. I’ve got a good friend named Dick Vogt who’s a member of my Bible study group, and he’s always telling us he’s not about to talk about his religion anywhere, because it’s not politically correct and because people start to look at him like he’s some sort of a nut case if he even brings up the subject. He says there is a disdain in many social circles with regard to religion, and I’m afraid he’s right, and he avoids the topic because he doesn’t want to be an outcast, and yet that’s what’s so curious and wonderful about the state of religion in today’s society: Politicians are encouraged to be open with regard to their faith—as are actors and athletes and other celebrity-types, to a certain extent—while the rest of us are encouraged to keep our mouths shut, and the reason we’re encouraged to keep our mouths shut is because a lot of people have the opinion that religion is based on condemnation and judgment. To many, it’s all about what you might have done wrong, and how you might have failed, and how you might repent. There’s a whole lot of sticking of noses into other people’s business, and yet there’s no sense of grace, or openness, or inclusion, so of course people aren’t talking about it at cocktail parties.

  WHY RELIGION MATTERS

  I wonder at this dichotomy, and I have to think it has to do with our inability to understand the challenges of today and translate them to the challenges of yesterday. The problems and the answers are the same. The players might be different. The details might be different. But in big-picture terms, it’s all the same. There are no new dilemmas.

  I want to begin this discussion on a personal note, because I believe it’s appropriate here. After all, faith is a very personal matter, and I find myself longing for a time when we can all talk about it, honestly and openly. In my own life it flows from my parents. Let me just reiterate a couple of points before making some new ones: I grew up in and around the church. I was an altar boy. For a long time I thought I’d become a priest, and yet as I made my way in the world I seemed to inch away from the foundation my parents had laid for me. Mind you, I continued to believe in God—
although for a time in there I confess I came to regard Him as a kind of spiritual Santa, someone to give me the presents I was seeking. I continued to go to church, although not as frequently as I might have. I even continued to pray, although here, too, the depth and resonance of my prayers were not what they had been or what they would become. Most important, I continued to live my life in ways that were consistent with the values I learned from my parents and that had been reinforced for me over the years. But there was very definitely a drift, a change in emphasis; it wasn’t all-important the way it had once been. It wasn’t a defining aspect of character, the way I once longed for it to be. I became set in my ways, as often happens, and I looked up one day and realized I hadn’t made the kind of room in those ways for religion. I wasn’t as plugged in as I wanted to be and I didn’t really care to get back to it.

  Lord knows, I couldn’t blame this one on anyone but myself. My parents brought me to the doors of our church, and they held those doors open for me throughout my growing up, but like many young people I began to walk away at some point. It no longer seemed relevant. The rest of my life got in the way. That’s no excuse, but that’s just how it was.

  Now, here’s where it gets personal . . .

  My parents, John and Anne Kasich, were children of immigrants. My father’s family came from Czechoslovakia; my mother’s family came from Yugoslavia. They met when they were both working for the Veterans Administration following World War Two. My dad delivered mail for twenty-nine years; our house was on his route. My mom eventually worked at the post office in Pittsburgh, once we kids were out from underfoot. Here again, I mentioned some of these things earlier, when I wrote about my childhood, but I reiterate them here for a reason. My parents were honest, hardworking, God-fearing people. They didn’t drink or smoke or spend money to excess. My mother would sooner walk a mile than spend a quarter to ride the city bus, and my father was equally thrifty. They were in their late sixties, in perfect health, looking ahead to a long, fulfilling retirement, when a drunk driver crashed into their car as they were leaving a Burger King one cool summer night in August 1987. The devastating paradox here is that they almost never went out to eat, but they went to Burger King because they liked the coffee, which was also a bargain.