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| John Michael Spinelli, Ohio's leading independent reporter, in the White House press room. Will he run for POTUS in 2020? |
Will the state flag he uses as a backdrop to his SOTS be as big as before or bigger? How many times will he invoke the name of The Lord in his address, since it's his go-to rhetorical device to utter political gibberish and get a way with it.
Will he use human props, as he did before when he brought on stage women who had been held hostage in Cleveland for ten years and engaged in a group hug with them, to distract from his mediocre at best and disastrous at worst public policies? How many times will he bring his wife and his twin daughters into his talk, since he's used them before to evade what he thinks on pointed questions, like whether he would vote for Donald Trump for president?
How much time will he devote to his well-worn narrative of his mail-man dad and faithful mom, both Democrats and pubic employees? Or his famous and favorite story of pressuring OSU's president of the day to deliver a letter to then-President Richard Nixon, who invited the young college student to the White House for a five-minute talk that turned into a 20-minute meet up with the president who engaged in corrupt activities and then avoided impeachment by resigning at the behest of right-wing senators, including Arizona's Barry Goldwater?
If Kasich falls back on his hyperbolic tale that Ohio was broke when he became governor, media worth their salt, who can review archived articles, should pin the tale on the liar. John Kasich inherited a recovering economy from a Democratic governor who indeed lost hundreds of thousands of jobs when Republicans Kasich-endorsed, like President George W. Bush and his Republican congress, teed up the Great Recession and the havoc it wrought across the nation. When Wall Street melted down as subprime mortgages and credit-default swaps tore people from jobs in all states, where was Kasich's voice then?. The recovery Kasich benefited from enabled him to hike the state budget by billions, a curious result for a broken state. For someone who has built a legacy on reduced government spending and whining about government debt, boosting the budget as he did needs more than a little explaining.
Las Vegas or Columbus odds makers would have safe bets that Kasich won't discuss the 20 bills he's signed that make women accessing their constitutional health rights an obstacle race. He won't talk about his role in enabling Ohio's terrible gerrymandering plan.
He won't talk about all the gun laws he's signed that have weakened state gun laws. He won't talk about his partnership with state leaders like Secretary of State Jon Husted and Attorney General Mike DeWine to thwart voting laws. He won't talk about how making eligible Medicaid recipients pay for some of their care, by working hours at jobs he's failed to create in quantity and quality, will make their lives better.
He likely won't talk about how far Ohio schools under his watch have fallen. He won't talk about how his closest political buddies successfully derailed a potential challenger in 2014 by engaging in Donald Segretti style dirty tricks, done with running for president in 2016 in mind. He really won't talk about how the husband of his chief of staff got hired at the Ohio Department of Education, where he then engaged in state and federal law breaking by falsifying data in an application to federal school authorities.
Now that the Trump administration is unraveling before the nation's eyes almost daily, it seems like a missed opportunity for Kasich. But for his antagonist posture on Trump, the National Chaplain might have already landed himself a cabinet official post or be in line to become the next big player in Trump's orbit as yet more Trump aides resign or exit following indictments from special counsel Robert Mueller.
All he wants, he says, is for his voice to stay in the mix after he exits his governorship. His shameless begging for donations to keep his voice alive, while still drawing a tax-payer paid salary and benefiting from all the tax-payer funded benefits of his office, borders on being beyond the pale. If anything, his record should be a classroom example for why voters should demand guarantees from future leaders that they won't use the office they're running for to run for a higher office voters didn't elect them to run for.
Having shown his cards on TV where he has essentially begged a couple of national political pundits to hire him so he can resume the talking-head media role he enjoyed at Fox News before being elected governor of Ohio in 2010, his last SOTS will be in form and substance as predictable as Ohio's right-wing legislature ignoring his major suggestions or overriding his next veto of a bill they will pass with veto-proof majorities.
For big-money TV host like Jake Tapper, George Stephanopoulos, Nicolle Wallace, Chuck Todd, and any other national political pundits who choose to ignore his disastrous record in Ohio because he keeps playing them for fools by dancing around their silly question of whether he'll run for president again, be a real journalist for a change. Don't swallow, hook, line and sinker, the lame-duck governor's flim flam. He has no aces to play at home or nationally, so why pretend he's got a winning hand that will do any better in 2020 than it did in 2016?
And if you just repeat what he says like its breaking news, here's some new breaking news: I'm keeping all my options are on the table for 2020, too. Who knows, maybe Ohio's leading independent reporter will mount his first campaign for POTUS.
Stranger things have happened. Just ask Donald Trump.
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