John arce sick is a politician New York Times bestselling author, former foster television host, and ultimately an american citizen who believed that unity is the answer to ourur most, promised problems. He has had a career in public and private sectors. His servicemember congresss from central ohio for a number of years he. S elected to the house that just 30 years old. After becoming the youngest state senator and ohio history. He beat 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, k6 worked as a managing director inin the end banking business for the Lehman Brothers where herc helped Companies Get the resources they need to succeed and create jobs. K6 is the author of four New York Times best sellers. Courage is contagious, stand for something, the battle for americas soul, every other monday, and most recently to pass america divided or united which reflects on his 2016 run on 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. [applause] is it possible for whoevers upstairs or turn the lights down just a little bit so i can see everyone . There also attractive. [laughter] that is the queue, turned them down just a little bit, thank you. Heyy folks, i am so excited to be in ohio. I live in ohio, i used to be governor of ohio did you know that . And that was a wonderful experience, had a great time. And he went through all this resume, but let me tell you a couple of things that might give you a little bit better sense of who i am. Many of you, after eight years shed think youd really know me, but i dont know if you know what makes me tick, or how o i got to where i am. I was raised in pittsburgh, and just a little town outside of pittsburgh called mckees rocks. And my father carried mail on his back for 28 years. And my mother was inandout of the workforce depending on what was happening with us. And mckees rocks was a very, very bluecollar, democratic town, in fact they told me they support roadblocks up to keep republicans out, but it was conservative, it was godfearing, it was kind of basicco 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 the coal mine and what he would come up they would not pay him for his work. It was tough. And my father and my uncle george, actually would go to school sometimes in flour sacks that were made up by their mother. My mothers, her mother lived with us and she was from yugoslavia and she could barely speak english. And so it was, you could just imagine it was not a family that was living in the highlife, or any of that stuff. I decided that when i graduated from high school, that i was going to make a big change. So i made a term attic decision and fateful decision to go 180 miles to the west, to that Little School called ohio state university. Right . And when i got there, i found myself in one of the towers. You all know those towers. Youve been to Football Games, youve seen them on television, or even on the campus. The tower i was in was 23 floors high and it was filled with all 18yearold freshman boys who had never been away from home before. And the nextdoor was a duplicate tower filled with all 18yearold freshman girls who had never been away from home before. Hmand i learned later, that in the downtown of columbus, they used to refer to the towers as sodom and gomorrah. [laughter] pr my uncle had told me jonnu always start at the top so i decided i was going to express my concern and get some things fixed so i called the president s office and i said id like to have a meeting with the president. The lady just me off and i called her the next day and the next day and i finally told her they said let me explain to you maam im going to have a meeting with the president. If i have to wait outside of the Administration Building for him to come im going to have a meeting. Ad she said whether why do you come in tomorrow must get this over with. I putow on my best blue jeans ad and a neck tie and went in to see the president and for some of you who are ohio state experts you might remember him. He was just a wonderful guy and i remember going into his office and he had beautiful g lighting and beautiful carpeting and a beautiful big desk and beautiful furniture and other green upholstered chairs and i was pretty impressed with that. He said whats on your mind and i told them. He said si ive been in school for three weeks which is about what it was and i said you know im undecided here at ohio state did when i look at that lady that would let me in and i look at the carpeting in the lighting in the furniture and staff im sort of 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. I said sir there are a number of things that i would like to talk to him about also but i said can i go with you . He said no you cant and i said if i ride 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 to this letter but have the president of the university during a letter to the president of the United States. I wrote it in my dorm room and i basically told them how i thought he washa doing and sincerely jon kasich and asked if he wanted to discuss it further let me know. Im a College Student and i will come and see you. How 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 opened it up and i go upstairs and i called home to pittsburgh. My mother answered the phone and i said mom im going to need an airline ticket. The president of the United States is going to want to have a meeting with me in the oval office. My mother is shoving pick up the phone something is really wrong with wrong with johnny. My parents thought it was ridiculous. So they talked about it and we discussed it and i finally got me a ticket to go down and i flew down to washington. I pulled up at the white house gate and theres a guy there and i had brought my father. It left my speech somewhere. He said your name again . Jon kasich and he goes come on and. So i walk in to the white house and im sitting on a settee right outside of the oval office. I have been there many times since that time but at the time im sitting right there in that chair or that little settee and the guy at the oval office is right there in a guy walks up to me and he says he says young man you were going to get five minutes alone with the president of the United States that is 1818 years old and im a firstquarter freshmen. What do you think . Do you think thats pretty good . Let me tell you what im thinking. A new jacket, tie, shirt and pants i didnt come all this way for five lousy minutes. And i was serious. So they open up the door and the president t says jon kasich the president of the United States and we shake hands in the oval office i satof down at his desk and the good news is theres an 18yearold firstquarter 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 ip dowd at the age of 18. [laughter] i should have transferred to miami. Thats what i should have done. So we dont have a lot of students here tonight but at schools around the country tell that story and everybody whos here youd never know whats going to happen. You never know what is going to come around and affect somebody so you have to think big and dream big. A couple of other stories that id like to tell you. When i graduated from ohio state i graduated in december. I went looking for a job in downtown columbus. Nobody would hire me. I looked and i saw the statehouse and i thought that would do the last place that anybody would hire me because i didnt know anybody predicted single relative in ohio. You hear about politics youve got to know somebody to get an. But i didnt have anywhere else to go so i walked in there and there was a guy and ive used his name three times in last month. I saw him and i said im looking for a job and id like to use my brain until i can go to law school and he says to me i will hireth you. I said you will . Yeah i will. What am ila going to do . You will ride resolutions like winning gertrude turns a 102. I said i can do that so he set come on and. A thursday but i went in on a monday and he said something is changed. He said there is an Internship Program and it wasnt just a little tiny internship. It was like working for the senators and their roll me a few people that were going to be hired for this so i went up for this interview in the asked me why i should have that job. I will explain to you in a few minutes but i had spent a little bit of time in washington in the summer and i told him i basically ran the city of washington. I was in charge and they found that amusing and they hired me. So ici went to work for all the senators republican, that was the opening and i went to work for a guy who many of you remember and his name was buzz luken. He was one of the perth people i worked for. Bob leonard is with me tonight and we all worked for several but that was my primary guy. He was very close to ronald reagan, very close hand when reagan was running in 1976 against gerald ford in the primary he got recruited to go out and be part of this top upperlevel people trying to get reagan to win the convention so he was out there in kansas city and he called me and he says i cant handle my work load. We are trying to get all these delegates for reagan over ford. He said you need to come out here so i flew out to kansas city and i make my way to this trailer. This trailerrk has a reagan bran trust. There is a Campaign Manager and head of Public Relations and people who were in charge of various states and ith walked in the door and they looked at me and i was 23 or 24 years old. They say oh we are glad you are here. Im like i wonder why that is. They said someone was supposed to come and handle five states for governor reagan and he didnt come. H we have an opening. 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. They gave me north dakota south dakota minnesota and they gave me i was. I spent a year in iowa one week in another state that i cant remember which one it was in my job was to go with governor reagan in the car to brief him about what i thought would get the vote from these different delegations and we ride over there and i would introduce him and the get back in the car and we would drive back. Can you imagine that . The w convention and ronald rean did notot win but on the top flr of the hotel he gathered his closest advisers and little old forest Gump Jon Kasich was standing in the back of the room. I watched him as reagan said we may have lost the battle but we have not lost the floor. He made a beautiful talk about these men and some women had tears streaming down their faces. It was a remarkable experience and it gave me insight to a lot of things. Lightning struck and it has for most of my lifetime. One other story i want to tell you. When i got done with the white house thing i applied for a job working in the white house and they wouldnt get many job. I wrote all these congressmen and none of them would even answer my letter but i was looking for somed summer jobs. Out of the blue they called me up and they said you cant have a job working in the white house but you can get a job working at the National Library of Medicine National institutes of health. I had no idea what the National Library was. I said im in. I got on a Greyhound Bus from ohio state drove to washington slept on a cot in a Fraternity House put my clothing in a broom closet and went to work at the National Library that 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 picks us up in this big blue cadillac. We piled in the car and we drive down to maryland to one of the beaches down there and i get talking to him and he tells me that he worked for jon f. Kennedy and he was very close to kennedy to the point where he had one of the special pt 109. If you were to try to sell when you would get a lot. A lady shaking her head. Very few people have them so i was fascinated. He worked for Lyndon Johnson and i said this is great. I asked if we could go to lunch and he j said sure. I go down to washington to meet him for lunch and come back the nexto week and he takes me to this restaurant. We get into the restaurant and i look at the menu and i said sir, i thought maybe were going to go to mcdonalds. I cant buy this. I dont have enough money to pay for this lunch and he laughed and he said dont worry i will take care of it. That next summer he hired me. I got m to meet all of the top Democratic Leaders inside the Democratic National party. It was a wonderful experience because i got to meet so many people who werean in the news ad people who are doing things. When i left to make up back to ohio state and finally graduated and got into the senate i told him i t was running for the stae senate. A couple of weeks later he called me back and he said you are running as a democrat, arent you . I said sir, a republican. He said send my money back. [laughter] i hope those stories give you a sense of who i am and who your cause there are special stories that i think itd happen by accident. Here we are tonight debating and starting again on friday and the whole business of the divide we have in the country and people wringing their hands. I cant believe trump is present then you have people who say i cant believe you dont like trump and you have thanksgiving dinner and you hold your breath going to have a fight right out of the dinner table. I actually have a couple of friends who dont speak to me now because of the positions i take in politics. It will heal. It has to heal that but you know whats happening . Isnt it just crazy . How did we get so wrapped around the axle that we spend all of our time fixated on someplace that is faraway . Im not going to tell you that the president ial elections dont matter. I ran for president. I know they matter. I know it matters what the president does so that election is going to be very important and some will want to participate by protesting are marching for whatever so i dont want to dismiss the importance of that but we also have these congressional legislative elections Town Council Elections and they tell you every time this is the most important election we have ever had. Faith of western civilization depends on it andci y then we he ann election and we meet the nw boss and guess what we know about the new boss . Hes the same as the old loss. And who nailed it right when they wrote that song. What i find so interesting today is how people are looking for something out here to comment and fix what we have right here. And im here to tell you tonight they aint coming. They are not coming to fix this. People want to know what do we do about all this anger this vitriol this anger in partisanshipop . Do you think somebodys going to come into fairfield and fix fix . They are not coming folks. There are a lot of reasons to be excited about that and the reason its so important and the reason why you cant 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. If you think about that and i know about if you are saying it isnt true but it is true. I can prove to be the course of this talk of power comes from the bottom up, not the top down. The change comes this way, not this way but i also want to tell you that theut change come if te change happens with us and that teens week, all of us need to live life a little bigger than ourselves and we have to think about the way that we can change the world. That may go even farther 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 sir and no one will ever be like you again. I happen to believe because of that you have something special. If you have never thought about this before in here to say to you i want you to think about what makes youth special because you are. You see we are all part of the giant ozdinec at this point in time. We are all supposed to be together to do things bigger than ourselves to make this place better. Every single one of us regardless of our age you dont opt out to the lord never had a Retirement Plan for living. No one can opt out and we can all by digging down deep figure out how we can change the world. You know what a lot of people are thinking now of . Thats nice. Hes nuts. I cant change the world. Im just living in town and just a regular person and whats he talking about . When i talk to you about doing special and i talk to you about living life a little bigger than yourself that im talking to you about the meaning 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 a little bit goofy and then it gets serious. In those dorm rooms you have discussions about the meaning of life. Think about it. People have discussed it forever. Plato believed in the eternal soul and there were people like gene joc russo who talked about the meaning of life and then there was the great religious leaders people like augustine, people like aquinas who all talked abou