The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated - Mark Twain
I hope this applies to Kasich's presidential bid and I hope by the time the GOP selects a candidate that he is the last "grown up" standing.
What I like, admire and respect most about Kasich is that he is experienced, informed, mature and most importantly, "unflappable and present" (by contrast and comparison, Mitt Romney was unflappable but unengaging).
To me he has been the least inflammatory, least reactive, least fear mongering, least petulant, least creepy and most rational, reasonable and mission (vs. "gotta win") driven candidate from either side.
He is drowned out because Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Clinton and Sanders have succeeded in causing a national amygdala hijack in the electorate.
For those of you not familiar with this, an amygdala hijack is a neuroscience based concept first described by Daniel Goleman, the creator of emotional intelligence. An amygdala hijack occurs when your brain is so overstimulated and jacked up by fear, loathing and/or manic excitement that your amygdala, which is located in your emotional mammalian brain and which serves as an emotional sentinel for your brain, hijacks you away from thinking rationally. Instead it throws you into your most primitive fight or flight reptilian brain.
If I were Kasich, I'd say the following...
Actually, he's too mission driven and humble to say it about himself, so I'll say it for him.
"Let he or she who has been riled up by fear or anger or jacked up by manic excitement and acted hastily in ways that he or she regrets, feels foolish about and wishes he or she hadn't done cast the first stone."
It may not be the other candidates' fault. To quote Pogo: "We have met the enemy and it is us." It may actually be that an electorate that is consumed by fear, anger, distrust and cynicism has baited the next President and all the other candidates have taken the bait (sound like an Obama, 2008 déjà vu?). But saying "Yes" to all that highly charged baiting does not a President who can actually lead change make.
If you're reading this and want to shove it back down my throat, have at me.
If however you can calm down your amygdala for a moment and believe that at least some of the above makes sense, I urge you to look up Kasich's Wikipedia page and look at what the man has done, without resorting to braggadocio (which he is clearly uncomfortable about). After reading about him, I challenge you to think of a better candidate to be our next President.
I am a baby boomer from Massachusetts, now living in California, and like many of my generation, I knew exactly where I was the moment I heard JFK had been assassinated. I also remember reading Kenneth P. O'Donnell's 1972 book, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and how true that book was.
Since I am a realist, I think the likelihood of Kasich getting his party's nomination in the face of so much stirring up and then pandering to raw emotion.
And so, when Kasich's bid fails and he drops out and we are left with an eventual President who cannot pull us together, lead or command respect and admiration from all Americans and the rest of the world, much less engender trust and confidence, I will say to myself and from all of you: "Johnny, we hardly knew ye."