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