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Updated | Ohio Gov. John Kasich became the 16th Republican presidential candidate Tuesday, and one of the most closely watched, despite his lowly position in the early polls. Launching his campaign from Ohio State University, his alma mater, the veteran politician displayed the way with words that propelled his meteoric rise in Washington as a young congressman in the 1980s and 90s (but also his penchant for rambling). Kasich's message was one of uplift and inclusiveness, a stark contrast with some of his GOP rivals, who are more focused on dishing out red meat to the party's conservative base.
The answer to restoring American prosperity is "not by dividing each other, but by staying together with our eyes on the horizon," Kasich declared.
It's an unorthodox approach, and it fits with an unorthodox politician, one who is fiercely fiscally conservative but has strayed from the Republican party on some domestic issues, like Obamacare and education. Kasich and his advisors are clearly hoping that message and the electability argument -- his work across the aisle and support in Ohio would work in his favor in a general election -- help set him apart.
"I believe I do have the skills, and I have the experience and the testing, which shapes you and prepares you for the most important job in the world," Kasich said to cheers, noting his experience balancing the federal budget as House Budget Committee chairman as well as defending the nation as a member of the House Armed Services Committee.
Those are the things that have attracted the attention of the political class, but so far have not captured the imagination of Republican primary voters who have often seemed intrigued with political newcomers like Donald Trump.
A younger John Kasich insisted on Meet the Press in February 1999 that "early polls and name I.D. don't mean anything,'' as he launched a soon-to-be-aborted presidential campaign. "Politics is ever-changing." It didn't work out that way more than a decade ago, but Kasich is hoping it changes in his favor in 2016.
Now, like then, he's running against a Bush, a son of a former president, a scion of the wealthy and politically connected family. Even many of the themes that Kasich addresses are the same—slashing deficits and balancing the budget (in a new ad, a narrator notes, "no one running for president has balanced the federal budget except John Kasich"), challenging the establishment (in both parties), making government "bottom up" rather than "top down."
"At his core, he's the same," says former Minnesota Democratic Rep. Tim Penny, a Kasich friend and ally during their time in Congress. "He is very, very serious public servant, which is to say he is keen on addressing the issues that need to be addressed and getting something done as opposed to just taking up symbolic approaches to an issue."
The question is whether Republican voters today will respond to Kasich's message better than they did 16 years ago, when Texas Gov. George W. Bush used a massive warchest and high name ID to steamroll the Republican field. The young congressman dropped out of the race before his nascent campaign even really got started. After spending five months touring the early primary states, "the assessment that I made and the words that heard were, 'Don't go away. Don't give it up. This just isn't your time,'" the 47-year-old said in a speech in Columbus in July 1999. He promptly endorsed Bush and retired from Congress, where he was chairman of the House Budget Committee, the next year.
Kasich is certainly more seasoned now, at 63, with a decade in the private sector and two terms as governor under his belt. That and his 18 years in Congress make him a veritable elder statesmen among the current crop of Republican candidates. The crowded field also plays to Kasich's advantage. While Jeb Bush is leading national polls and the fundraising race, he's not the overwhelming favorite that his brother was..
"I'm older, I'm more faithful," Kasich tells Newsweek, when asked how he's changed since his first presidential run. Leaning back on a plush leather couch in the official governor's residence in Columbus, Ohio, Kasich is more contemplative than one might expect for a politician known for his hyperactivity and offhand remarks. But he still flashes the same impish grin seen in photos from the 1980s when he was an energetic, even mischievous, 30-something Congressman.
As governor of "a really big state like Ohio, you're either going to crash and burn or you're going to grow," Kasich says. He suggests he's done the latter. Critics believe the governor has changed his tone, but not his hard-line views since taking over the state, and to an extent, Kasich agrees. "I've developed a more soothing voice than I had at the beginning," he says. "I've changed a little bit how to communicate more than I've changed what my thoughts are."
Still, Kasich's unconventional style and what could be described as an old-school approach to partisan politics may be tougher for many GOP primary voters to swallow than it was 16 years ago. The party looks very different than it did in 2000, when Bush won as a centrist "compassionate conservative" (a term Kasich said at the time "defines exactly what John Kasich is all about").
"I just don't see things in partisan terms, I never have," he explains. "If you're a liberal or you're a Democrat, there are going to be things that I agree with you on. I just, I don't know, learn to get along with people, learn to work with them." That wasn't all that uncommon in Washington of the 1980s and '90s, or in many statehouses across the country. But at a national level, where hyper-partisanship has become the norm, that kind of cross-party collaboration on issues like welfare reform now borders on heresy.
Kasich has certainly endured barbs from his own party for policies such as accepting more Medicaid money for Ohio that was offered as part of President Obama's Affordable Care Act and standing behind the Common Core education standards, a national curriculum that's come under attack from conservatives. Still, he's remained popular in Ohio, a pivotal swing state, where he's polling at 60 percent.
Now Kasich 2.0 will test the national political climate, and whether GOP primary voters are willing to nominate someone who doesn't always toe the party line, or whether 2016 isn't his time, either.