Iowa gets brief glimpse of a detailed, intellectual Kasich

Ohio Gov. John Kasich browses in the bookshop of the National Czech & Slovak Museum in Cedar Rapids before making a rare Iowa campaign appearance. (Photo: Khue Bui for Yahoo News)

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Two photographers were stationed outside the National Czech & Slovak Museum in Cedar Rapids, waiting in the cold for Gov. John Kasich to arrive for a rare event Friday morning.

The Ohio governor, however, had already slipped inside, and was wandering around the museum’s gift shop in the few minutes he had before his stump speech.

“This is my heritage,” he said when I asked him what he was doing. Kasich lumbered through the aisles of Christmas ornaments, marionettes and T-shirts emblazoned with Czech slogans before stopping in front of a book in the back of the shop.

“He’s one of my heroes,” he said, touching the cover of a book about the life of Vaclav Havel.

I asked who Havel was. Kasich looked aghast and asked how old I was.

“You need to find out who he is,” he said, seriously. “Google him. He’s one of the greatest men.”

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Hoping to further engage the governor, I frantically looked up Havel. I learned that he had been a famous Cold War dissident and writer who helped lead the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and who became its post-communist president. But by then Kasich was out the door.

Later, about 10 minutes into his speech about his Croatian and Czech roots and his work with Pres. Ronald Reagan, Kasich referred to our brief conversation. “I tell you, I was just there in the museum for a second and there was a young woman in there, she was 30 years old, and I mentioned this guy … Havel,” he said, explaining that I didn’t know who he was. “And Vaclav Havel was of course a Czech playwright. He also became a political leader and spent time in prison.”

There I was, called out for my ignorance in the middle of a stump speech. (For the record, I am 30 years old; Havel left office in 2003, when I was a junior in high school. I should definitely know who he is.)

Kasich is a bit of a pedant — he’s an enthusiast of knowledge and education, and speaks in dense paragraphs about the roots of his political beliefs. He told an atheist in the crowd who questioned him about his faith to read C.S. Lewis. He told another attendee who brought him a book by the theologian N.T. Wright as a gift that he liked Wright but he “hadn’t made my starting line up.” Near the end of the event, Kasich asked the crowd to applaud an immigrant from Sierra Leone for going to Yale. By then, an attendee in the front row had fallen fast asleep.

Kasich has focused most of his political energy in New Hampshire, where he hopes to pick up independent voters, and only scheduled two town halls in Iowa ahead of Monday’s caucuses. He’s held fewer events in Iowa than any of his Republican rivals, and he once said that he and Iowans are a bad match. (He later said he “blew it” with those comments and in fact liked Iowans.)

His all-vegetables stump speech, where he openly talks about the sacrifices that must be made to save Social Security and reduce the federal deficit, sets him apart from many of his rivals, who outline vaguer but more pleasant sounding paths to prosperity.

When a voter asked him to explain his Social Security plan after he had already outlined it briefly, Kasich got testy. “I just answered that,” he said. “Well, do it again,” the voter replied. “No, I did it once, I’m not going to do it again,” Kasich said stubbornly.

But then the governor sighed and explained it one more time.