Kasich v Brown for POTUS: One is ambitious. One isn't

As Ohio media, especially Columbus statehouse reporters, mentally masturbate over the giddy improbability that the race for President of The United States in 2020 could pit two native sons against each other, that the odds of that happening are near equal with another dinosaur-eliminating meteor hitting Earth anytime soon.

But the brigade of Buckeye reporters, led by the always John Kasich-friendly Columbus Dispatch, will spare no digital ink in following the road ahead for the soon-to-be former governor and Ohio's senior senator, recently elected to a third 6-year term, Sherrod Brown.

Gov. elect John R. Kasich on Election
Day night in 2010.

For John Kasich, the Pennsylvania-born backer of Reagan-era supply-side economics that former Republican President, now deceased, George H. W. Bush called "voodoo economics," his life after governor rests on the media's continued gullibility in believing that he's the anti-Trump dancing bear who might, could, maybe but won't tell now (that is, until God tells him) whether he'll take on the President Donald Trump in the Republican primaries slated in two years.

Kasich, as ambitious and wylie as Aaron Burr ever was in the 1790s to elevate himself to president, thinks he can cherry pick the issues he wants to talk about, knowing he can rely on media to confine itself to his top-drawer topics: debts and deficits and proselytizing about a fantasy federal balanced budget amendment he claims will cure the ills of wasteful government spending.

Ever the showman, Kasich's time as a Fox News commentator will soon be revived as he desperately seeks another easy, high-paying gig as another partisan talking head on some 24/7 cable news show. Kasich's second showing as a presidential candidate in 2016 (his first was in 2000) ended in tragedy as he barely won one Electoral College vote (270 are needed to be POTUS). His politically motivated stubborn streak kept him in the race as the last man standing against Trump despite his laughable showing in one state primary contest after another. He lost 49, winning one, Ohio, but with less than 50 percent of the vote.

For John Kasich, the call to be president is his life goal as he puts his old one of being right with Jesus when his soul reaches the Pearly Gates in layaway. With little campaign cash to spend in 2016 compared to many of his better financed rivals, Kasich turned to financial help from Ohio taxpayers, who covered the cost of his salary and certain expenses, especially protection services by state highway patrolmen dedicated to protecting Ohio's governor while on the road. Kasich says he wants to keep his voice active while he wanders the political graveyard. The only problem with his voice is that it has a history of being wrong on most important issues, from health care to women's rights to voting to job creation and tax cuts and more.

Meanwhile, across the isle and ready to start his third 6-year term in the Senate, is Sherrod Brown

This reporter (left) interviews Sen.
Sherrod Brown in Columbus.

. Born a Buckeye, unlike Kasich who adopted Ohio, Brown has defined his persona and political leanings over 40 years in public office. Starting in the Ohio House, then as Secretary of State for two terms, then as Congressman and now as sitting Senator, Brown's recent win in a very red Trump state may appear more like a political anomaly than a slam dunk, given his alignment with progressive values that include defending workers' rights, which he's translated into his new catch phrase, "the dignity of work."

But with Brown's cruise to victory over GOP Trumpster Congressman Jim Renacci, Brown now finds a growing platoon of Democrats, and others more open to the new breed of Democrats who are making their own way against the traditional tide of establishment Democrats, who want him to run for POTUS. Kasich has to hunt and peck for his band of zealots outside the ranks of media, compared to Brown who finds himself on a list of more than a dozen Democrats whose names are touted as 2020 contenders.

The big difference between these Ohioans is that the former, Kasich, will spare no child to be president, while the latter, Brown, is being pulled along like the moon pulls a reluctant sea to rise to high tide.

Sherrod Brown, for his many decades in public office, isn't running forward to occupy the Oval Office in the same pell mell way Kasich is. Is Brown responding to the cheering crowd who wants him to run? Yes. He says crowd pressure is forcing him to take a look at a race he wasn't planning on making, unlike Kasich who's eyed the Oval Office going back to 2000, when he retired after nine terms in Congress to mount a pathetically troubled campaign for president that crashed before it took office as Republicans rallied around their real favorite, then Texas-governor George W. Bush.

The two do share common ground: both barely register blips on a list of 2020 candidates pollsters poll about. Brown registers just one percent by Politico, while Kasich's name and many others are totally absent.

As national and state media invest their time in wild speculation on whether one or both of these Ohio officials will actually declare their candidacy in early 2020, this reporter, who called the results of Ohio's 2018 elections nearly a year ago, before any candidates had actually declared their candidacy, can save them all some time.

Kasich will make a third run at it just to show his ego is as unbounded now as it has been since he first entered elected politics in 1978. Brown, a short-list contender for VP for Hillary Clinton, will not make the leap despite calls to run. And no matter whether Mr. Rumpled Suits gets haircuts on a regular basis, these considerations of appearance, which right now are all media has to hang on to, are not predictors that he'll essentially leave his job as full-time senator to run for president, even though he can do so in two years, lose, and still have a job for another four years, maybe in the majority if 2020 is as good to Democrats as 2016 was to House Democrats.

Term-limited Kasich, meanwhile, has no where to go but up after he retires from state CEO status. He will get a media job, so his twitchy face and strident voice will be seen and heard by the American public.

But the glib former governor should be forewarned that if he gets his wish, his voice on all the issues he's wrong on will resonate to his disadvantage, as wised-up Americans see through his false prophecy of claims he can "bring people together," when all he's done is try to triangulate the great partisan divide to his advantage.

Kasich versus Brown in 2020? The sun will explode first.