John Kasich's work: for the governor, it's personal.

AuthorMcGraw, Daniel
PositionSpecial Report on Mental Health

At a John Kasich town hall meeting in Watertown, New York, in April, a questioner from the audience was having a difficult time formulating his question. He was able to get out that he suffers from autism and is college educated with two master's degrees, but said he has a difficult time finding employment. It seems that employers are often put off by his bad social interaction skills and are worried about his potential ability to fit in with other employees. Because of problems like this, the young man told Kasich, adults suffering from autism have very high unemployment rates.

Kasich moved closer and leaned in, clearly both agitated and consumed by the man's problems.

The 600 people in the room could see that Kasich knew what this guy was talking about--not in terms of the specific symptoms of autism, maybe, but in a personal and emotional way. Because if there is one thing John Kasich understands, it is not being understood. Everyone agrees he is bright and likeable, but not everyone agrees that he brings a sense of what we constitute as normalcy.

He has been described as flaky, mean, cheerful, ornery, sullen, distant, and enthusiastic. Someone who is honest but not forceful about his spirituality who often spouts crazy-uncle idioms, who sometimes lectures instead of discussing, and who is always impressed with his own jokes. In a 1995 Washington Post article, the then Ohio congressman was described by those with whom he worked as someone who needed both Ritalin and Valium for his own mental balance to balance the federal budget. The writer also observed that Kasich's eyes blinked thirty-six times in a minute, compared to just two blinks in the same period by "the more inert" Texas Congressman Dick Armey. "[Kasich] radiates so much energy that colleagues in the Ohio delegation, weary and looking for sleep, dread the thought of getting seated near him on flights back to the Midwest," the article said. The Post story also declared Kasich to be a "wiry and fidgety politician."

But on this day in Watertown, his eyes seemed to blink slower as he settled the young man down and addressed disability and mental health issues. "When it comes to developmentally disabled--and we have to come up with a better term--we just need to integrate people into our system to the level they are able to perform," he said. "We just need to let people know about these issues. It's not hard to bring people in. What the heck, I'd hire you."

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