OpEdiTude: Finding His Real Purpose In Life

"My purpose is to serve the Lord," Gov. John Kasich repeated yet again this week, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported. "My purpose is to try to live a life a little bigger than myself."

Jesus Christ, John, you're not running for National Chaplin, so give the God thing a rest already. You had a chance early in life to serve the Lord, but you ditched Him for a long career in politics that's made you very rich and a legend in your own mind.

If at the ripe old age of 64 you still don't know what your purpose in life is, who's fault is that? Here's a start: Your purpose for the last two years of your final 4-year term as state leader is to not screw things up any more than you already have, which has been a lot so far, as only God and those who pay close attention know.

Your Master didn't want you to be elected president, so you can erase that big one purpose from your chalk board of bigger than life purposes. And for obvious reasons The Lord didn't want you to join the Trump Administration, so erase that one, too.

Is your real purpose to fade into history sitting on your back porch waiting for the Lord to send you a sign about what to do after 2018, when your two terms as Governor of Ohio ends? Not likely since your ego has always been a little bigger than yourself.

Is your real purpose to go back into the media world, the industry that lost all credibility this year because it couldn't tell the difference between fake and real news? Roger Ailes, your former aggressively horny but now disgraced employer, is gone at Fox News, but you can probably nab yourself another lucrative post-public-service, know-nothing spot being the petulant adolescent you've earned a well-deserved reputation for from those left running the most unfair and unbalanced network in the world.

Is your real purpose to go back to being a salesman on Wall Street, like you were at Lehman Brothers, where as a rainmaker you expected doors to open so your team members could milk and bilk taxpayers, as you helped make possible with Ohio's retirement systems that lost bigly from bad deals you helped match make? Now that you've tasted the sweet fruit of CEO world for almost eight years, it's unappetizing to go back to being just an employee for someone else more powerful who gives you orders and expects to carry them out.

Is your real purpose in life to continue your Quixotic quest for a federal balanced budget amendment? You'll be off the taxpayers dime, so you'll travel without a cadre of state funded police protection and have to foot the bill for expenses along the way. You didn't have much money in your presidential run, and that's when you were governor, so it's not likely the flood gates of funding will open for you when you're out of office, operating on a smile and a shoeshine like Willy Loman.

Is your real purpose in life to finagle moving Michael Drake out of the president's office at your Alma mater, OSU, so you can take it over, making some real money again in the process, moving your team from state to OSU, marketing the university with tentacles around the world and delivering a homily to each graduating class of 10,000 or more? Word is that, while you will have appointed most of the members of OSU's board of trustees, they aren't keen on you being president.

Is your real purpose in life to write yet another book that cunningly associates you with people who have done wonderful things? You've stood for something your entire political life, but what you've stood for other than making life difficult for everyone but yourself has escaped most of us.

Is your real purpose in life to lay a plan for your return in 2020, when you'll be as old as Hillary Clinton was this year, mostly out of sight and mind, with President Trump ready to obliterate anyone who dares think they can topple the Great Donald? Good luck with floating your presidential prospects in four years.

Is your real purpose in life to actual run a business, something you talk about but have never done yourself? Be a reak CEO again, but of your own profit-making business, not some grifter's think-tank or policy institute that survives on rich people's money to continue ideas and programs that benefit the few while leaving the many with loaves of bread and fish. Jesus took a few fish and loaves of bread and multiplied them for the hungry masses. Your political ideology always wants to reduce food for the hungry so they get weaned off of being too dependent on government handouts when they need help the most.

Is your real purpose in life to take on Josh Mandel, and maybe your former driver, Pat Tiberi, in the Republican primary in 2018 to see who survives to then take on Sherrod Brown for Senator? Mandel, the former Marine who spent $40 million to take out Brown in a losing campaign in 2012, will cut your heart out without wincing once. If you choose that purpose in life and survive, Sherrod Brown won't be Ted Strickland. You'll have your eight years of bad governance to defend, and Brown won't let you do to him what Strickland let happen in 2010 and this year.

Is your real purpose in life to to give back to schools and local governments the billions you stole from them in your first terrible budget? That would be a good start in confessing your sins as governor. Remember, not stealing is one of the Ten Commandments.

Is your real purpose in life to stop closing abortion clinics for women who need them? In case you missed it, Pope Francis just said that anyone, even a woman who's had an abortion or a doctor who helped her, can be forgiven by God if they are truly repentant.

Maybe your real purpose in life should be to confess all your sins to your Master, then beg for forgiveness and grace. There's hope for you after all, but you just have to ask for it.

You asking for forgiveness would truly be living a life a little bigger than yourself.

OpEdiTude: An op-ed with attitude, meant strictly to reflect the opinion of the author.