Kasich: We’re Not Running for Class President

‘People who run for president never keep their promises’

KASICH: “Oh, I think a chunk of it is hot rhetoric. And the other part of it is I'm a problem solver, you know? And I'm not going to just make statements just to make them. Do you ever notice, when people run for president, they never keep their word? They never keep their promises. And the reason is they make promises that are ridiculous. They don't know what they're talking about. So, you know, running Ohio, look, this is a big, big state. This is an important state. I have to solve problems. But I'm balancing budgets and cutting taxes and promoting school choice and reforming everything and deregulating so much of the silly laws that we have in our state…”

TODD: “You're also doing another counterintuitive thing. You spend a lot of time talking up your experience in Congress. Lot of people, when they run for president, I don't care if they're a Democrat, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, all were talking about they're going to come in there and they're going to clean up the mess that's Washington. You're running on a, ‘No, I've got the experience to make Washington work.’ How are you going to sell that to voters who don't like Congress, who think congressional experience isn't worth a darn?”

KASICH: “I think we have to be careful about what we think that voters think. I think voters want the system to work. I think they want us to balance budgets, fix the fence, you know, solve the immigration problem. They want us to do many, many things. Reform the health care system. So they know that there is great anger and antipathy between the parties, and I don't think they want that to be the case. And secondly, I can run on it because I spent ten years of my life to try to balance the federal budget. Now when I say that I was an architect, I feel like I'm talking about some sort of a fiction movie, you know, because people have a hard time believing it can be done. And then when it comes to the Pentagon and the reform things that we did, I'm very proud of what I was able to do there. And, Chuck, now being a governor and executive, I know what the problem is down there. And part of the reason I'm running is because I have the experience to know how to fix it. And you can't fix it with hot rhetoric, one party. It has to be, look, either we're in this to fix America or we're in this to get elected. Somebody said to me, you know, ‘Is it about elect--"

TODD: “Can you do both anymore?”

KASICH: “Well, Chuck, they say --“

TODD: “Is that what we're going to find out?”

KASICH: “-- it's about electability. You know, I said, no, it's about capability. And part of capability is electability. But if we're running for these offices just to get elected, I mean, we're not running for class president. We're running to be the commander-in-chief and the leader of the United States of America. Grow up.”

 

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