Transcripts For CSPAN2 John Kasich Its Up To Us 20240713

Good evening, everyone. Thank you all for coming. My grandfather certainly admired great leadership, and boy, do we have a tremendous leader here for you tonight. Two term former Ohio Governor john kasich is a politician, New York Times bestselling author, former Fox Television host, and ultimately an american citizen who believes that unity is the answer to our most common problems. He has had a a storied career n both the public and private sectors. He served as a member of congress from central ohio for 18 years. He was elected to the u. S. House at just 30 years old. After having become the youngest state senator in ohio history. He went on to become the chairman of the House Budget Committee and balance the federal budget four times a feat not accomplished since. After leaving congress in 2000, kasich work as as a managing director on the Investment Banking division for Lehman Brothers where he helped Companies Security resources they needed to succeed and create jobs. Kasich is the author of four New York Times bestsellers, courage is contagious, stand for something, every other monday, and most recently, america divided or united which reflects on his 2016 run as a republican primary president ial candidate and his hopes for americas future. His latest book entitled its up to us ten little ways we can bring about big change was just released. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming john kasich. [applause] thank you. Well, is it possible was ever upstairs to turn those lights down just a little bit so i can see everybody who are also attractive . Thats the queue. Turn them down just a bit. Thank you. Hey, folks, im so excited to be in ohio. I live in ohio. I used to be governor of ohio, did you know that . That was really a wonderful experience. I had a great time. He went to all this resume but let me just tell you a couple things that might give you a little bit better sense of who i am. After eight years you would think you would really know me, but i dont know if you know what makes me tick or how i got to where i am. I was raised in pittsburgh, and just a little town outside of pittsburgh called keys rocks and my father carried mail on his back for 28 years, and my mother was in and out of the workforce to bin of what was happening with us. And the keys rocks was a very, very bluecollar democrat town. In fact, they tell me that they used to put roadblocks up to keep republicans out, and but it was conservative. It was godfearing. It was kind of basic values, common sense, all those kinds of things. My fathers father was a coal miner and he had a very, very hard life because he didnt have anybody to represent him. And he would go down in the comite and when you come up they would not pay him for his work and it was tough. My father and my uncle george actually would go to school sometimes in flour sacks that were made up by their mother. My mother, her mother lived with us and she was from yugoslavia and she could barely speak english. So, you know, you could just imagine, it wasnt a family that was living the high life or any of that stuff. And when i got there i found myself in one of the towers, you all know those powers. Youve been to those football games, youve seen them on television, youve been to the campus. The tower i was in was 23 floors high and filled with 18yearold freshman boys whod never been away from home before and nextdoor was a duplicate tower filled with all 18yearold freshman girls who never been away from home before and i learned later that the downtown of columbus, they used to refer to those towers as sodom and gomorrah which was pretty true. I had 15 college roommates. I had been in the dorms here at miami but i could imagine that you dont have, and i write dean, something that thats that crazy and there are a lot of things that went wrong early on. Asses and bureaucracy and Everything Else so my aunt had told me john, you always start at the top so i decided i was going to express my concern and get some things fixed soi called the president s office. I said id like to have a meeting with the president and the lady just blew me off and i told her the next day and the next day and i finally told her, i said let me explain to you im going to have a meeting with the president. If i have to wait outside the Administration Building for him to come im going to have a meeting and she says why dont you come in tomorrow and lets get this over with so i put on my best blue jeans and necktie and went in to see thepresident , his name is lawson, some of you might remember him. He was just a wonderful guy and i remember going into his office and it had beautiful lighting and beautiful carpeting and beautiful, big beautiful steps and beautiful furniture in these leather, green leather upholstered chairs and i was pretty impressed with that. So he said whats on your mind and i told him i said, ive been in school about three weeks. Which is about what it was and i said you know, im undecided here in ohio state but when i look at that lady that wouldnt let me in and i look at the carpetingand lighting and furniture and desk, im thinking this is the job for me. What exactly do you do . So he tells me about his fundraising responsibility. And his academic responsibility, and he tells me the next day he was going to fly to washington and have a meeting with president nixon because they had become friendly and i said sir, there are a number of things that i would like to talk to him about also. But could i go with you . He said no, you cant and i said if i write a letter, would you give it to the president. He had never seen me before so you ask, i dont know whats going to happen in this letter but ive got the president of the university carrying a letter to the president of the United States but i wrote it up in my dorm room and i did basically, told him how i thought he was doing and sincerely john kasich, ps would you want to discuss this further, let me know. Im a College Student and ill come see you so a couple of weeks later i go down to my mailbox and theres a letter from the White House Office of the president and i open it up and i go upstairs and i call home to pittsburgh and my mother answers the phone and i said mom, im going toneed an airline ticket, the president would like to have a meeting with me in the oval office. My mother is shouting honey, pick up the phone. Something is wrong with johnny. I dont know what my roommates thought but i can tell you my parents thought this was ridiculous. And so they talked about it and disgusted and finally got me a ticket to go down and i flew down to washington and i pulled up at the white house gate and theres a guy there and i think, i thought i left my speech somewhere. And he says your name again and i said john kasich and he says come on in so i walk into the white house and im sitting on a city thats right outside the oval office and ive been there many times since that time but at the time im sitting right there in that chair or in that city. The oval office is right there and the guy walks up to me and he says young man, youre going to get five minutes alone with the president of the unitedstates and im 18 years old, i may first florida freshman. What do you think . You think thats pretty good, ha. Let me tell you what im thinking. New jacket, new tie, new shirt and i didnt come all this way forfive lousy minutes. Im serious. So they open up the door and the president says john kasich, john kasich the president of the United States and we shake hands in the oval office and i sit down at his desk and the good news is as an 18yearold, ohio state freshman, i spent 20 minutes alone with the president of the United States. The bad news is i spent 18 years in congress and if you add up all the time i spent in the oval office i peeked out at the age of 18. Itshould have transferred to miami. Thats what i should have done. So we dont have a lot of students here tonight but i tell that story and really even tell everybody thats here that you dont know whats going to happen. You dont know whats going to come around so you have to think big and dream big. A couple other stories that id like to tell you. When i graduated from ohio state i graduated in december and was going to try to go to law school and i went looking for a job in downtown columbus and nobody would hire me. So i looked and i saw the statehouse and i thought that would be the last place that anybody would hire me. Because i didnt know anybody. I didnt have a single relative in ohio but you hear about politics, youve got to know somebody to get in. But i didnt have anywhere else to go so i walked in there and there was a guy by the name of salty lewis, ive used his name three times in the last month. I saw him and i said im looking for a job, id like to use my brain until i can go to law school and he says to me ill hireyou. I said you will. What am i going to do . Youll write resolutions, when it gertrude turns 100 you will write a resolution and we will send it out with a ribbon on it and it will be great and i said i can do that. He said come on in. I went in on a monday and he said something has changed. He said there is an Internship Program and it wasnt just a tiny internship, it was like working for the senators and there were only a few people that were going to be hired for this so i went up for this interview and they asked me why i should have the job and then i will explain to you in a few minutes that i had spent a little bit of time in washington in the summer and i told them, i said i basically have run the city of washington, i was in charge and they found that amusing and they hired me. So i went to work for somebody, for all the senators and republicans, that was the opening and i went to work for a guy who many of you remember. His name was was lucas, he was one of the people that i worked for. And bob lever whos with me tonight, we all worked for severalbut that was my primary guy. But he was very close to Ronald Reagan. Very close. And when reagan was running in 1976 againstgerald ford , he got recruited to go out and be part of the top upperlevel people trying to get reagan to win the convention. So he was out there in kansas city and im back in columbus and he calls me and he says i cant handle my workload. Because youre trying to get all these delegates and try to get them to be for reagan over ford and he says i cant handle my workload, come out here so i flew out to kansas city and i make my way to this trailer and this trailer had the reagan brain trust. There was a Campaign Manager and head of Public Relations and people who were in charge of various states and they looked at me and i dont know, i was 24 yearsold and they say oh. Were glad youre here. I wonder why that is. They said somebody was supposed to come and handle five states for governor reagan and he didnt come and we have an opening. Do you think you can handle five states for governor reagan . I had no idea what that meant and i said absolutely, i can get the job done so they gave me north dakota, south dakota, minnesota and they gave me iowa, i spent a year in iowa one week and one other state, i cant remember which one it was my job was to go with governor reagan in the car to brief him about what i thought would get the votes for at least different delegations so we dried over there and then i would introduce them and we get back in the car or somebody would introduce him and sometimes they would get back in the car and we drive back , can you imagine that . The convention ended , Ronald Reagan did not win. We got on the top floor ofthe hotel, he gathered his closest advisers and little old forest gump , john kasich was standing in the back of the room and i watched this as reagan said we may have lost the battle but we have not lost the war and he made a beautiful talk and all these grown men and some women had tears streaming down their face and it was a remarkable experience that gave me insight into a lot of things that i want lightning struck as it has been through most of my lifetime. One other story i want to tell you. When i got done with that white house thing, i applied for a job working in the white house and they wouldnt give me the job and then i wrote to these congressmen and none of them would answer my letters but i was looking for a summer job so they called me up and said you cant have ajob working in the white house but you can get a job working at the National Library of medicine at the National Institutes of health. I have no idea what the National Library of medicine, i said im in so i got on a Greyhound Bus from ohio state , drove to washington, slept on a cot in a fraternity house. But my close in the broom closet and went to work at the National Library of medicine and it was a great experience. However, every weekend i would hitchhike down to the beach with my pals. And one weekend we were hitchhiking and this guy comes by and picks us up in this big blue cadillac. We pile in the car and we are driving down to maryland to one of the beaches down there and i get talking to him and he tells me he had worked for john f. Kennedy and that he had been very, very close to kennedy to the point where he had one of the special pt 109 little pins, they are invaluable and probably if you were to try to sell one, this lady is shaking her head, very few people have them so i was fascinated and then when kennedy was assassinated he went to work for Lyndon Johnson and i said thats great so i asked him if we could go tolunch and he said sure. I go down to washington to meet him for lunch , came back the next week and he takes me to this restaurant and we get in the restaurant and i look at the menu and i said sir, i thought maybe we were going to go to mcdonalds. I cant buy this. I dont haveenough money to pay for this lunch and he said dont worry, ill take care of it and that next summer he hired me. I got to meet all of the top Democratic Leaders inside the Democrat National party. And it was a wonderful experience. I got to meet so many people who were in the news and things, people that were doing things and when i left and got back to ohio state, graduated and had my experience and got into the senate , he said ill send you acampaign contribution so he did. A couple weeks later he called me back and said you are running as a democrat, or q . I said sir, as a republican. He said send my money back. But i hope those stories give you a sense of who i am, who your governor was because they are special stories that i think didnt happen by accident. So here we are tonight, impeachment being debated all day and whos going to start on friday and forget impeachment, just the whole business of the divide we have in the country and people wringing their hands i cant believe trumps president and youve got people that say i cant believe you dont like trunk and you have thanksgiving dinner and you hold your breath that youre not going to have a fight breakout at the dinner table. Iactually have a couple of friends who dont me now. Because of the positions i take in politics. It will heal. It has to heal. But you know whats happening, isnt this crazy . How did we get so wrapped around the axle that we spend all our time fixated on someplace thats far away . Im not going to tell you the president ial elections dont matter. I ran for president , i know they matter. I know it matters what the president does know that election will be very important and some will want to participate by protesting or marking or supporting or whatever so i dont want to dismiss the importance ofthat but we also have these congressional elections, these senate elections, these legislative elections, Town Council Elections and they tell you every time this is the most important election we have ever had. The fateof western civilization depends on this. And then we have an election and we meet the new boss and guess what we know about the new boss . Hes the same as the old boss. The but the who nailed it right when they wrote that song. So what i find so interesting today is how people are looking for something out here to come in and fix what we have right here. And im here to tell you tonight they are not coming. Theyre not coming to fix this. People want to know what do we do about all this anger, this vitriol, this division, this partisanship. Youthink somebodys going to come in to fairfield and fix this . Theyre not coming. But theres a lot of reasons to be excited about that. The reason its so important, the reason why you can be excited about this is that means that we are the ones who have the power. We are the ones who are ultimately in charge. Now, that is if you think about that and i know a lot of you are saying thats not true and it is true and i can prove to you over the course of this talk that power comes from thebottom up. Change comes this way, not this way but i also want to tell you that the change, and the change happens with us. And that means that we, all of us need to live a life a little bigger than ourselves. And that we have to think about the ways that we can change the world. And let me go even further to say that every Single Person in this room, every person in this room is special. Nobody has ever been like you. No one has ever been like you. And no one will ever be like you again. I happen to believe that because of that, you have something special. If you have never thought about this before im here to say i want you to think about what makes you special. Because you are. You see, were all part of a giant mosaic at this point in time where were all supposed to be together to do things to live a life bigger than ourselves to make this life better and every single one of us, regardless of our age now, you dont opt out. The lord never had a retirement plan. No one can opt out and we can all by digging down deep, figureout how we can change the world. So you know what a lot of people are thinking now, thats nice. Hes nuts. I cant change the world. Im just living in town and im just a regular person and what is he talking about . So when i talk to you about being special and i talk to you about living a life a little biggerthan yourself , then im talking to you about the meeting of life. The meaning of life. Many of you when you went to college were up at 2 00, 3 00 in the morning having an extra beer, feeling like a little bit goofy. And then it gets serious and in those dorm rooms you have discussions. About the meaning of life. Think about it. Peoplehave discussed this forever. Plato believed in the eternal nature of the soul. Aristotle was another one that discussed the meaning of life. There were people like camo, people like russo who talked about the meaning of life and then there were the great religious leaders. People like augustine, people like aquinas who talked about the meaning of life and one other thing they talked about , at least plato did because he talked about the eternal nature of the soul. They had a discussion also about if there is a life everlasting, how does what we do here affect what we do there . Id like you to think about that for a second. We talk about it atcollege, the meaning of life. We talk about it when we bury somebody we love. It gets late into the night and thats when our families get to be the closest. We talk about it when we have a fantastic wedding. And we danced and we have a great time and the bride is dancing with dad and the groom is dancing with mom and then we have our drinks and then we gather. And ive been there many times. You see, its important for us to think about those things. And its important to think about how we mightchange the world. So when you say little old me , i want to give you a couple of examples. I can give you a list from here to columbusof examples. But i want to tell you about a guy, he quit school in the eighth grade. He had challenges. He took up shoe shining for a living. He made a shoeshine box and lived in pittsburgh. He quit integrated because he was challenged and one sunday he was watching a childrens telethon, katie ka in pittsburgh and he thought the idea of doing something for Childrens Hospitals, it just took over in him and on monday he took his entire life savings, 800 and he went to the Childrens Hospital and he tried to get his moneyto them. They had no idea. His name was albert lexi. They had no idea what thisguy was all about. But they asked him when you come to the hospital and shine shoes . He said im pretty busy. But maybe i can fit a couple days in a week and he would get on the bus which scared the living daylights out of him and he put this 40 pound shoeshine box on and he go to the Childrens Hospital and ive seen him a couple of times and when i walked in, everything that i saw when i walked in the hospital were shoes. They were everywhere and im like, what are all these issues . They told me that these doctors who were in an operating room with a child that had a severe problem, a child who you wondered if they were going to make it, they would see albert and they wanted him to have their shoes because he would spend time with with them and all of a sudden he was transported to a different place. An oasis for a few minutes. The same was true with the nurses and all thestaff. They will all wanted albert to sign shine their shoes so he would take the money to support himself and put it in his right hand pocket and he would take his take money and put it in his other pocket. And over the course of his lifetime and weve now lost albert, he donated over 200,000 to a fund for moms and dads who couldnt afford to pay their kids hospital bills. Now, did albert change the world . I think one pair of shoes at a time and i always think aboutwhere he is now , wearing the crown. Albert, ill be there before you knowit. Hes just one story. Theres a little girl, her name is flow and i was in North Carolina two days ago speaking to a great group down there at davidson and they knew about hurricane florence. This girls name was florence. She was five years old and she saw that this big bad storm was going to hurt these people down there and told her mother mom, people arent going to like me because my name is florence and that storms name is florence and ive got to do something, ive got to get bandaids to send to those people down there because they are going to be hurting. She cant her fouryearold brother into pulling her around in a little red wagon getting supplies for the people who were going to be hit by the storm. I talked to her mother and after a little while she had collected so many supplies they couldnt fit a bandaid in their garage, they had so much so people from the neighborhood all pitched in and then a tractortrailer showed up and they took the supplies and sent them to North Carolina, this little girl five years old. She changed the world. She changed some peoples world. I dont know what shesgoing to be like when shes 25 years old. I used together a metal out in my state of the state address and it was a metal i gave to people who were outstanding but one that i gave to the youngest kid, he was eight years old and he had lived in homeless shelters on and off because his parents were drug addicts and his grandmother took him in and so she found out that he loved the xbox. So she told him for christmas im going to buy you an xbox. And he says grandma, when i was in the homeless shelter i was cold. I never had my own blanket. Why dont we take the money for the xbox and viable blankets and give it to the people who live in the homeless shelter . What happened was everybody in the area found out what he was doing. They had all the blankets theyd ever needed because an eightyearold boy that decided that helping somebody else was more important than what his own self interest was, imagine what hes going to be 25 years old and then theres a little girl by the name of greta finberg, some of you have heard about her. Let me just give you my two cents on the environment. I believe that god created this wonderful place where we live. He didnt create it for us to worship it. He created it for us to be managers and stewards of it. This little girl is 15 years old and she would stand outside of parliament and she would hold a sign, i care about my planet. I wish you would to read she skipped school a couple weeks and decided she better go to school so she just showed up on a friday and she started a worldwide movement. Have you heard of her . Theyre painting a mural of her on a billboard in san francisco. People talked about her winning the nobelprize what shes done. Hes a lot older now. Shes now 16 years old. She did an incredible job and then theres four basketball fans, you might remember a basketball player, you wouldnt remember this name, his name was kyle guy and he played for the university of virginia and they got to the semi final last year. The team was trailing by two points and as the clock was running out he launched the three point shot and he got fouled. So he was given a chance to step to the freethrow line and make three free throws. If he made them all they win the game, if he misses two theylose. And he steps up and he makes all three. They win the game, go to the finals. They win the finals and he gets picked as the most valuableplayer of the turnips. When they gave him his metal and his award, he said this is wonderful. But this is nothing compared to what i can now do because i now have a platform. And i tell you, im going to tell people about the times that i cried in the shower after basketball practice, fighting off my depression, fighting off the things that were leveling me in my life and now i can tell people its okay, dont be afraid. Telling people that this is so important for our young people today, for your grandchildren. If youve got a problem, youve got to get help. Youve got a broken arm, they know how to fix it. Youve got a broken spiritand its harder. And if weleave the broken spirit alone , bad things can happen. And so when you can admit that you have a challenge, what will really matter then is that if youre strong, you will admit your weaknesses but if you thinkyoure strong and you run away from your weaknesses , youre really weak. And this is a message thats going across our country today and dont you think its time for us to eliminate the stigma connected tomental health and Mental Illness for our children and grandchildren and all of us. [applause] so let me tell you about one or two more. Michael phelps by the way said he spent too much time looking at the bottom of the pool and not enough time gettingto know people and hes fighting the issue of mental health. There were these two firemen and i want to bring this right to where we live. A woman had a car accident and she had her daughter and her daughter was young and she was really shaken up. So she was sitting on the grass when the police were there and the firemen were there and she was hysterical. The firemen must have had daughters, saw her there shaking. And they noticed that she was holding a bottle of nail polish and they went over to her and said would you paint our nails . And she did. And they held their hands up like this. And the girl was comforted. And call. Yesterday, i was reading some stories about what is happening in hong kong. People are being beaten, they are being put in prison. Their being, some are being shot. And these people who are searching for their freedom, some degree of freedom run in and get here gassed and beaten and they run out and there are people who do a variety of things were not the protesters but they will help them to wash the gas out of their eyes. They will do a variety of things to try tocomfort them. And i was reading about one woman and you know what she did . She hugged them. She hugged them. Can we hug somebody . Can we make somebody feel better . Can we make them, do you think we can change the world to . Because thats really what it takes and there are people who are brave and people who are good role models and examples but we can all figure out what were supposed to do so how do we do this . One is we have to slowdown. Im telling you, whether its ipads, whether its iphones, its all these apps and all this stuff, all of these things that absorb ourtime. We need to slow down. They tell me if you just walk away from your phone for a coupleof days , its like a vacation. Because we are constantly bombarded with information. And i dont know if you think about this when you go out for a drive to a beautiful place, if you drive really fast, you dont take it in. You miss everything thats there that youre supposed to see. The same is true with life. If we can slow our lives down , all of us at any age, at any age, we begin to hear thatlittle voice. That talks to us. And it tells us what it is were supposed todo. Secondly, weve got to get out of our silos. So tonight we were talking, i was talking to somebody at the table and im not going to say who it was that i sampled fox news and i never watch it and i hate cnn. Understand folks, why is all this fighting . Social media. A lot of it is we only absorb that which we agree with and we become defiant about it im right and youre wrong. Get out of the silo. Sample Something Different you and learn new things. If you dont, youre boring. You are boring. And if you let your mind explore new things, and im reading now about quantum physics. Why am i reading about it . I dont know anything about it,ive read about it. But i can tell you and now i talk to people and show them how little i know and they corrected me but the fact is that we cant just live in our own silo because when you say how canwe stop all the fighting , its us. Its not somebody else, its us. What are we doing and then theres a third thing. Theres a lot more than that. We got to consider our eternal destiny but theres one other thing i think about now more than ever. We need to put ourselves in other peoples shoes. I can tell you having been the governor and i was involved in welfare reform when i was a congressman. My dad carried male on his back. I believe the leftwing and rightwing media has all worked to damage the fact that some people need help. You take a woman with a couple kids whose husband ran out on him who gets up at 5 00 in the morning to get her kids ready for school and drop them off and go to work maybe work a second job and they need some food stamps. They need to eat. Now, i guess we could pound the table and say work harder. You put yourself in their shoes. I was with a lady the other day, shes been working for 15 years at a Clothing Store and shes, she makes 10 an hour. And hes trying to take care of her grandkids and all this kind of stuff, makes 10 an hour and i said what we get another job where theyre going to appreciate what you do . She said i cant leave. Why is that western mark because then i wont have healthcare. And imagine for a second not having healthcare . Could you imagine for a second your Adult Children and their spouse without healthcare . Thats about as scary as it gets to me. But when we put ourselves in other peoples shoes, and we stopped for a second and think about them because thats the way we really are, then we begin to have more compassion. We have a little less judgment. Were just a little bit more considerate to others and when we do those things, you know what . We get to feel good about ourselves and we get rewards. And ill tell you, im talking about you living life a little bit bigger and sometimes you know what that means . That means you rub up against somebody else. People dont like change agents. They fight all the time, greta the bird is being demonized online because she wants to care about the planet at the age of 16 but kids from parkland who said there was a young woman who said why am i thinking about preparing my will when i should be preparing my College Application . Theyve been demonized because of their struggle and what they experienced. It just goes with the territory. Martin luther king was gunned down. Rosa parks was belittled. Danny hamer hammered. The great reviews nick to who got out of the soviet union, brutalized in a soviet blog, its just any time if you want to change the city council, you want to change the school board, you want to change a stop sign and have somebody in your neighborhood begin to cuttheir grass , criticism is coming. But thats okay. Because when the criticism comes, it knows, you know youre bringing about change. Some of the other people, wilberforce, just saw a movie about nelson mandela. Its unbelievable what happens and you can find your satisfaction when youve achieved something. Johnny, he goes into the hospitals dressed up like a pirate and he entertains those kids or theres a rapper by thename of drake , i like him but drake shows up at the hospital room, girl write him a letter and she says oh my god its straight and she says its here, you asked me to come, im here. They feel 10 feet tall. Folks, let me close this by telling you about this whole business of us and politicians. Ive Held Elected Office for 30 years. 30 years. I was a state senator, i was a congressman,i was a governor. I knowhow the system works. There are a few people at a time, a leaders who lead regardless of what they hear but most politicians listen to us. And im going to give youa couple examples. The civil rights movement. Do you think they pass those laws on their own . Martin luther king went to see john kennedy and kennedy left the white house and said kennedy didnt care. He was really upset about it. What happened over time because of king and some of the people i mentioned, people began to see that we needed justice. And the pressure came from the bottom up. From marches, the gassing, the dog writings, the jailing. It didnt square with us as free people. We wanted justice and we demanded justice and the politicians ultimately after a decades long struggle began to pass the laws. Womens suffrage. The think those guys wanted to give you yourpower . They didnt. And you think about how long it took for women to get the right to vote and if you were an africanamerican, you had to wait even longer to get the right to vote. Because you werent favored. And how did ithappen . We demanded it from the bottom up. Im convinced that we hadnt had the protests on our College Campuses we would still be in vietnam today. Theyd have somereason as to why we would still be there. Its got ended by thestudents and adults who finally said enough of this. And the same is going to be true about environmental awareness and some is going to be be true about guns and lets talk about this. When i was governor i tried to pass this law. I want you to think about this. This law said that if somebody in the workplace was a threat to fellow workers or they were a threat to students on a college campus, that there would be a judicial proceeding along with maybe input from Law Enforcement and the gun would be taken away from somebody who was unstable. To get back whenever theywere stabilized. Thats going to become law. Its going to take a long time but people are going to demand it. Theyre tired of this and it will only happen and it comes like this. So folks, a couple of things. Join a movement, start a movement, give somebody a hug. Put yourself in somebody elses shoes. Have a smile on your face, be patient. Get out of your silo and this is whats going to heal our country because the great news is we are in charge, not them area and were in charge. And we come together all across this country and i speak all across this country , people are hungry for this. They just want to know what to do. You dont have to climb mount everest. You dont have to be greta thunberg. Martin luther king said if you cant do great things to do good things in a little way. And the fighting and vitriol and we can start to do the things we want out of our government and our community that will allow us to have a healthier and a more together nation and neighborhoods and families. Thank you. [applause] okay, now im going to, now from nx act im going to saw a lady in half. Were going to take some questions and if you want to yell at me, feel free. Ive been yelled at the best ofthem. [applause] running for president is not like, i think ill just run for president. Okay. Why dont you run for president . Why not . You just dont run for president. You have to have a campaign. You have to raise money, you have to have a staff. You have to have a chance to win and when i ran in six teen, i thought i had a chance to win and we did very well. Didnt win but did well. This time in my party, the Republican Party there just is not a path. As i like to tell people when my wife and i used to do a lot of hiking and we will get back at it when you hike you see where you want to get to. Youre on the trail, youve got to have a path toget you up there. You try to go up without a path its not going to work. But you never know what you might see a path. So you keep on the trail. You never know. There we go. Yes. I have a couple of questions. There are two votes in my life that mean a lot to me. One was 84 with reagan, the other was march 2015 in the ohio primary voting for you my question is as a lifelong republican. Thank you by the way. As a lifelong republican how are we going to move forward in a posttrump world considering that a lot of republicans me just do a little bit of an analysis about both parties. So the republicans right now if you look at the midterm elections and look at the election tuesday where republicans were wiped out in virginia, wiped out in philadelphia,they lost the Governors Office in kentucky , the governor didnt do great, i dont want to attack him but he was part of it, they lost so when you take a look at whats been happening , republicans increasingly do not get the votes from young people. They dont get the votes from minorities. They dont get the votes from College Educated and theyre not getting any votes in the suburbs so if im a businessman, i have a restaurant and i need customers and i dont get young people, i dont get minorities and i dont get anybody witha college education, hows your restaurant doing theyre not doing very well. The democrats on the other hand, their leading candidate right now , i think she might be or maybe not is Elizabeth Warren and she is so far to the left, i tried to tell when im on cnn i was having a pretty robust conversation, yesterday i was in charlotte and we were walking or two days ago we were walking and we got in this elevator and there was a guy there, he was a hardworking guy. Hes got a vest and hes got about an hes a bluecollar guy. And im sure his union fought to get him healthcare and if i were to say to him was in, ive got a great idea. Im going to take your healthcare away and give you a government program, i dont know that he wouldlet me out of the elevator. So both parties are not really responding in my opinion to the issues that trouble us so much. And what i always think about Department Stores, if you have 2 Department Stores and neither of them have people that want to buy, sometimes theres a Third Department store that springs up. I dont know, i know this. We have to think of ourselves as americans before anything else. I have people come up to me and say this happens every day. Im a democrat and i like you. Why dont we leave out a democrat and just say you like me because we dont need to be thinking about all this partystuff. I also have an observation to make and that is our parents leave us with two things area our religion and ourparty identification. But we may be heading to a post Party Opportunity in the future if they dont get it and what do people care about. They care about their jobs and their wages. And they care about the fact that in a world of changing technology, ai, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and im going to have my job . Whats going to become of me . I want to tell you thisabout healthcare. Me, for me and my family , i have twin daughters, a wife and little old me. Itcosts me 30,000 a year for healthcare. 30,000 a year. For my daughters and my wife, they have a high thousand dollar copay or deductible. So thats possible that its going to cost 45,000 for us. Tell me whos happy withthat, raise your hand. This issue must be addressed. Because we cannot bankrupt people who work a lifetime to get somewhere and all of a sudden they get bankrupted or put back so far because they get sick. That issue needs to be addressed. I want mygrandson or granddaughter, whatever for my kids to go to college. How are we going to afford that. How are we going to do that. These are the things, these are these table issues that i think matter to people. And the party that can address them will be the party that both rises and the party that can address them in my opinion will be left behind so i dont know where were going to go over the next i dont know where going to go tomorrow, let alone where were going to go at the end of this next election but they have to think about it because theyve got tosatisfy us. We have a question over here. Im a retired high school teacher. I taught 40 years. 15 years in illinois growing up in the chicagoarea and 25 years. Im independent voter. I would tell my students by definition of an independent voter was my 1976 about. In illinois i voted for jimmy carter for president , big jim thompson republican governor in the same house. And in my lifetime ive only voted for democratic president s twice. But my question is do you think the Electoral College in this 21stcentury serves a purpose . I think we wouldnt have russian bots and gerrymandering and all of that if we had one person, one vote and not an Electoral College. Heres the problem. And i dont favor that and im going to tell you why because i dont want california and new york to decide whose president. Now look, he raises a legitimate point. We have, i respect him. The guys taught government history for 40 years, are we going to sayhe doesnt know what hes talking about , he does but what the founders decided is the tiny little states need to matter as much as the big states so you texas, california and a handful, illinois and we dont quite matter and i can, i cant prove it here but if we get it that way, candidates would never be in flyover country and they wouldnt go to the small states. But i think he raises another good point. And that is i think one of the biggest problems, one is the problem of gerrymandering. What does that mean you study that the only things we can remember from the ninth grade, gerrymandering so when they drew these really weird looking districts , were changing that in ohio. You see, if you do that, then people will run in the district where only a republican and win. And they can run in the democratic districts are only a democrat can win a a stat. You follow what im saying. If youre republican, you got to watch your right flank. Because if you go soft. Or you compromise, theyre coming at you from the. And if youre a democratright now , this lady up in new york is trying to run for primaries against democrats because theyre not art enough on the left and they have to watch the left and what that does is it just separates us. The days when i was in congress it wasnt like this like it is now but it was getting that way. What you have to do is to do something so that the districts are drawn more fairly and what weve done in ohio is to say you cant pass a congressional map or a legislative map where you dont have the minority agreeing to it. And that will help us. I dont know if it will solve it but it will help us to go a long way because what happens is allowed voices on both sides push everybody out here. I will also tell you i have a different view and a lot of people about the base. These debates are crazy. Now, i was in a lot of them. Maybe you never saw me. I was like a ugandan snow skier. First of all, they didntknow my name. It was governor of ohio. Governor of ohio, hi. Got better the longer i hung in there but what happens with the debate is you have to figure out how to Say Something to get everybodys attention. And its hyperbole. Let me ask you this, do you think we should pick the leader of our country on the basis of whos the most clever under the klieg lights . I dont i know i dont want to pick a doctor that way. I want to pick a doctor whos good. I want boring. We need, the president ial debates are different. You get two or three of them, those are fine but the way that i believe it up to work, people are probably going to watch because its not fast and furious but the way to do it is you get mrs. Bishop right here. Shes a tough lady, a tough bird. You let her sit in the room with me and ask questions for 30 minutes on National Television and youre going to get a sense of who i am so the way we doit now , its to hollywood and we are cheating ourselves. So i would suggest they come up with another way of doing this. The problem is, the audience theyre getting to these debates is not very good and that in the date when i was debating we were getting 30 Million People to watch. People are kind of getting tired of this but we need a better way in which to become president and folks, i believe that we are as human beings individuals, were sort of at a right centerleft area were sort of in the middle area extremes. That doesnt mean we shouldnt have firebrands but we as a people, were kind of more comfortable with somebody that can be a reformer, but somebody whos not out here while and thats what we need more of in our big National Leaders and by the way, big National Leaders who are not read or not blue but red white and blue and ive never understood all these people yelling and screaming. One other thing i want to tell you. Im going on too long but one other thing. There are people who have leadership positions. There like chairman of the intelligence committee. Senior minority. Youve got the speaker of the house. You got the chairman. I was chairman of the budget committee. They need to police their members. And when their members start to be rude, then the other party, they got to shut them up. They got to keep them. Right now theres not much of that. I remember watching. I think i was watching when bill clinton or was it obama or somebody was making a speech and a guy who was there at the state of the union yelled you lie area and then he put out a fundraising letter the nextday to raise money. If i havent been there, i would have called mrs. Bishop in. And we would have had a talk with that guy and it wouldnt have beenpretty. We need more of that. More of the supervision among the politicians. What else. Ill take a couple more. How are wedoing on time . You already got your set, you yelled it out and i answered. We got to go to the settlement back here i think we maybe have time for one more question. I have a question or here so if its a quick question i think we have time me give you a quick question, that lady and that gentleman and will wrap it up. And whats the score inthe football game, does anybody know . We will find out tomorrow what you say most people are in the middle but how can a person get elected in this environment . Theres a certain magic. First of all, if you want to run for president , i believe that you can be sensible and you can be someone a problem solver, the interesting. If youre boring youre going nowhere running for president but if you have an edge to you, even being in the middle , youre going to be fine when it comes to congressional elections, those dont have anything really to do with all these issues. They really have to do with who projects a sense of i can represent you. Remember when you voted for student body president in high schools, using both personally on the basis of their resume or the basis of their, you voted for them on the basis of i think thats a person that can be a leader read i think most people vote and thats why when politicians say i cant do that, the people will be mad , let me tell you about that. You cant listen to the voices that yell at you and one day they love you, the next day they hate you and the next day they love you. If youre looking to beloved, by a dog. Dont go into politics. So i think it is possible but you make a very good point. Youve got to have a certain edge for a certain magic to you when you climb up that high but i also believe today people are getting tired of all this. Theyre getting tired of all this yelling and screaming and disruption. We want to be better and happier. Thats just my view but i will tell you this, i wouldnt run if i ever ran again i wouldnt remember in those debates i never attacked anybody personally. I never did anything that i thought belittled me or belittled the state of ohio because i was governor at the time and if you dont win, fine. Life goes on. Life goes on so be proud of who you are and look yourself inthe mirror and let me close by saying this. You gave eight years to be thegovernor. My philosophy was dont leave anybody behind. Make sure that the people that live in the shadows are not ignored. I think we had a healthier and happier state and i think that its going to continue here under our new governor. I want to thank you for those elections but you know what else, when i ran for president i won ohio and you stood up for me and thank you verymuch. God bless you. [applause] thank you. Good evening, everyone. We are ready to get started. Thank you for being here. My name is edward, curator of lect