Let me answer the question asked by Rachel Maddow of Hillary Clinton: Of all the Republican candidates if you absolutely had to choose a Republican candidate to be your Vice President, who would it be?
I will answer for myself: John Kasich.
His Town Meeting presentation had maybe one hundred people at it, in the population center area of the state--Londonderry, right near Manchester. Although for comparison 24 hours later Carly's Town Meeting had 500 or so people.
Kasich made the case that governing well is hard, but that some people are better at it than others, and he is good at it and can prove it. He was a congressman for 18 years and during the Clinton years as Chair of the Budget Committee created balanced budgets. He is a reasonably popular governor in a swing state. He is good at this, he said.
His Town Meeting had all the elements of these Town Meetings:
A setup with a microphone near one end of the room, with 90 percent of the chairs facing the microphone and a few "special guests" seated behind the speaker, where they will be seen by the camera.
A stool with one or two water bottles sitting on it.
Twenty minutes or so of remarks giving the "origin story", a description of the American situation, and then the solutions achieved by voting for the candidate.
The Q&A session for about a half hour.
The summation by the candidate.
I asked him a question. He had spoken repeatedly about the important of jobs as the best social service program and criticized the current economy as being job killing (regulations, Obamacare). I said that the greatest job killing event in my lifetime was the financial crisis. Trump, I said, had noted that Kasich was high up at Lehman Brothers, one of the key malefactors in the creation and sale of bad mortgages. He responded that Trump misunderstood his role, that he was far from leadership and he ran a two person office in Columbus, Ohio, and that he did not lead Lehman into its disastrous policy and eventual bankruptcy.
Kasich's summation started with his posing a question that had not been asked. He said that sometimes people ask him why a man of faith like himself is not getting the "religious vote". Kasich said he did not feel that faith should be traded on, but rather it should quietly inform lives. And then he summarized by making the key point of his candidacy: that he had a real track record of success in governing.
There is none of the soaring rhetoric found in the talk by Rubio or Florina, or the emotional appeal of Christie's personal stories.
But he is likable and earnest. He gets about 2% of the vote in polls.
I will answer for myself: John Kasich.
His Town Meeting presentation had maybe one hundred people at it, in the population center area of the state--Londonderry, right near Manchester. Although for comparison 24 hours later Carly's Town Meeting had 500 or so people.
Kasich made the case that governing well is hard, but that some people are better at it than others, and he is good at it and can prove it. He was a congressman for 18 years and during the Clinton years as Chair of the Budget Committee created balanced budgets. He is a reasonably popular governor in a swing state. He is good at this, he said.
His Town Meeting had all the elements of these Town Meetings:
A setup with a microphone near one end of the room, with 90 percent of the chairs facing the microphone and a few "special guests" seated behind the speaker, where they will be seen by the camera.
A stool with one or two water bottles sitting on it.
Twenty minutes or so of remarks giving the "origin story", a description of the American situation, and then the solutions achieved by voting for the candidate.
The Q&A session for about a half hour.
The summation by the candidate.
I asked him a question. He had spoken repeatedly about the important of jobs as the best social service program and criticized the current economy as being job killing (regulations, Obamacare). I said that the greatest job killing event in my lifetime was the financial crisis. Trump, I said, had noted that Kasich was high up at Lehman Brothers, one of the key malefactors in the creation and sale of bad mortgages. He responded that Trump misunderstood his role, that he was far from leadership and he ran a two person office in Columbus, Ohio, and that he did not lead Lehman into its disastrous policy and eventual bankruptcy.
Kasich's summation started with his posing a question that had not been asked. He said that sometimes people ask him why a man of faith like himself is not getting the "religious vote". Kasich said he did not feel that faith should be traded on, but rather it should quietly inform lives. And then he summarized by making the key point of his candidacy: that he had a real track record of success in governing.
There is none of the soaring rhetoric found in the talk by Rubio or Florina, or the emotional appeal of Christie's personal stories.
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| This is a summary of the Kasich value proposition: knowing how to get government results, now. |
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| The audience at the Kasich event |
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| This is the typical setup. Indeed, everyone uses a stool that looks just like this one. |
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| Kasich at work. His feet were arranged like this multiple times during the evening |
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| Kasich cares about policy and the debt is a point of policy. It is like Kasich not simply to complain about it, but to measure it. |
1 comment:
I wish there were more places like this, because it was simply too amazing for words. I came here with my boyfriend the other night, and it was absolutely fabulous. The use of wood throughout the New York event space adds a very warm and inviting feel to venue.
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