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Decoding John Kasich: Looking at the Ohio governor's words and record as he looks at 2016
But as he takes his rhetorical style national, the Republican presidential prospect's shopworn talking points and turns of phrase are meeting a fresh set of eyes and ears.
People in the shadows? That's Kasich shorthand for the mentally ill, the drug-addicted and the poor. If you're just now tuning in, be prepared to hear it whenever Kasich defends his decision to expand Medicaid -- a decision that has angered conservatives who view the move as an embrace of big and bloated government.
Flyover country? That's how Kasich describes Ohio before he took over as governor. It's an old pejorative for the Midwest -- and to hear Kasich tell it, it no longer applies to the Buckeye State thanks to his budget wizardry and laser focus on job creation. In Kasich's preferred narrative, he put Ohio back on the map. What he won't say is that there already were signs of improvement as the nation recovered from a recession that played out on his Democratic predecessor's watch.
Money can't buy you love? With a tip of the hat to Lennon and McCartney, that's Kasich's way of acknowledging that he's not the fundraising machine that Jeb Bush is. And it's a reminder of when Kasich tried to run for president the first time, only to be chased from the race by the well-funded George W. Bush, Jeb's older brother.
Justin Bieber? Linkin Park? Bono? Just a few of the names that Kasich, 62, likes to drop to flex his pop-culture cred. Yes, it's a bit forced. But just go with it. He's been doing it so long that the names used to be Eddie Vedder, Counting Crows ... andBono.
These and other Kasich favorites are finding their way into national media and local newspapers in early primary states such as New Hampshire and South Carolina. That makes this a good time to review some of the more substantive staples of his stump speech -- a good time to re-establish our fluency in John Kasich.
ON WALL STREET ...
"Wall Street is necessary because it should help move the financial operations of America forward," the governor said last month during an interview with "Meet the Press" moderator Chuck Todd. "But I'll tell you the problem with Wall Street. It's too much about 'I gotta make money.' It's too much greed."
Decoded: After leaving Congress in 2001, Kasich went to work for Lehman Brothers, the big Wall Street investment-banking firm that collapsed and took the national economy down with it. He became rich, making nearly $1.4 million in 2008, according to tax-return records he released during his 2010 run for governor.
Since that campaign, Kasich has walked a fine line, touting his private-sector experience when it suits him, downplaying it when he doesn't. He has bragged about being part of the Lehman team that took Google's stock public -- a claim that the Dayton Daily News found to be overstated. Then there's the understated Kasich who "was one of 700 managing directors" and "worked in a two-man office in Columbus."
Kasich is likely to switch between these dueling narratives, depending on his audience. When he cries of greed, he hopes to turn a potential negative into a positive. Who better to criticize a monolith like Wall Street than someone who's seen it from the inside?
ON BALANCING THE FEDERAL BUDGET ...
"You know, I was budget chairman in '97, the last time we balanced a budget and the first time since man walked on the moon," Kasich, reminiscing about his days in Congress, said during a January interview on "Fox News Sunday" with Chris Wallace.
Decoded: Kasich is particularly big on the "first time since man walked on the moon" tidbit and uses it often. It adds just to the level of loftiness he's aiming for as he seeks to turn another possible weakness into a strength: His time as a Washington insider.
In the past Kasich has overstated his role. Yes, he was chairman of the U.S. House Budget Committee that produced that historic budget pact. But in 2010, when he described himself as the "architect who balanced the budget" and "created a surplus" that led to "record job creation," PolitiFact found the claim only half-true.
Overlooked in Kasich's bragging are the roles played by then-President Bill Clinton, congressional Democrats and a robust economy. And while Kasich occasionally acknowledges his support of the government shutdowns that preceded the budget deal, it's not the type of story that voters frustrated with D.C. gridlock will appreciate.
Kasich now is calling for a cons utional amendment that would require a balanced federal budget, so you'll be hearing much more about his astronomical derring-do.
ON BALANCING OHIO'S BUDGET ...
On his watch as governor, Ohio "went from $8 billion in the hole to where at the end of this budget cycle, we will have a $2 billion surplus -- in the period of about four years,"Kasich said during a March speech at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire.
Decoded: The hole of which Kasich speaks was a projection made by his budget advisers in 2011. State law requires Ohio's budget to balance, so when facing his 2012-2013 budget, Kasich had to find money somewhere, cut spending or do both.
But was the hole really $8 billion? That figure was repeated so often that The Plain Dealer in 2011 decided to check its accuracy. What the newspaper found was an early estimate of $7.7 billion, but that was before factoring in anticipated revenue growth from the economy, already in recovery. While the $8 billion figure was still being bandied about, the hole was actually between $5.9 billion and $6.1 billion, The Plain Dealer found.
OK, call it $8 billion or $6 billion -- it was still a hole, and the Columbus Dispatch said its size was unprecedented. And Kasich not only found ways to fill it -- not all of them popular -- but also to have money left at the end of the next budget cycle, which he used to replenish a rainy day fund and cut Ohio income and small-business taxes.
Some money came from Medicaid changes that put more people in managed care as a way to control spending growth. Kasich also reduced state funding to local governments by nearly 50 percent, which meant cuts to schools and communities. Democrats still decry the cuts. While he was at it, Kasich also eliminated the Ohio estate tax.
Kasich says the state cuts took only a small chunk -- an average of 3 percent to 5 percent, he told the Cincinnati Enquirer -- from local governments' own budgets, and he said they could withstand it. Policy Matters Ohio, a liberal think tank, counters that when the cuts are combined with other state funding changes, including Kasich's elimination of Ohio's estate tax, many cities are still hurting.
ON RECOUPING OHIO'S JOBS ...
"We were down those 350,000 jobs," Kasich said during his March speech at St. Anselm in New Hampshire. "And now we're up" by roughly that number now. "Think about that turnaround in a period of just a little bit more than four years."
Decoded: Ohio lost jobs during the recession, and during their 2010 campaign Kasich hammered his Democratic opponent, then-Gov. Ted Strickland, for those losses. The whole nation lost jobs, of course, but Kasich's point today is about the turnaround.
His numbers are generally good, although Kasich tends to emphasize Ohio's private-sector job growth and not its government employment, which has shrunk. Kasich believes that's as it should be because, he says, the private sector drives economic growth.
Yet Ohio's job growth rate -- a comparison of where the state is compared with where it was -- actually lags the nation's, according to a number of sources and reports, including the congressional Joint Economic Committee. Policy Matters, the think tank, said last month that Ohio's job total grew about 1.2 percent over the last year while the national average was 2.3 percent. George Zeller, a Cleveland economic analyst who tracks economic indicators, said after the March 2015 job numbers came out that Ohio had gone 29 straight months with job growth below the national average.
To be fair, a Northeast Ohio Media Group analysis last year found that Ohio's job growth has generally trailed the nation's for at least a half-century. So this is not to say Kasich bears the blame for any of these numbers. But keep that in mind when he claims credit.
ON HIS RE-ELECTION LANDSLIDE ...
"In the great state of Ohio," Kasich told CNN's Gloria Borger last month, he won a second term last November with "64 percent of the vote, 86 out of 88 counties, won a county that Barack Obama won by 40 points." He makes that point regularly.
"I must be doing something right," Kasich told CNN.
Decoded: Kasich is popular, no doubt about it. His victory was so resounding that he even trounced his Democratic opponent, Ed FitzGerald, in the Democratic stronghold of Cuyahoga County, where President Barack Obama bested Mitt Romney in 2012 with a nearly 43 percent advantage. And that happened to be FitzGerald's home county.
http://www.cleveland.com/open/index....looking_a.html
.... but no mention of his War on Women?
