BY PETER BRONSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The First Hippie in the White House has been a real bummer. Bill Clinton is one bad trip. But it's too late to run back home to our parents, and our kids aren't old enough to take over yet. So it looks like America will get stuck with another baby-boomer president.
We'd better start looking.
It's only two years until the next election, and that's not much time to find one trustworthy, honest boomer who has what counts: character.
We can start by ruling out all the cadaver-stiff, sanctimonious hypocrites like Al Gore, who drag out dead relatives to beg for sympathy votes. Then let's reject anyone who has a closet full of skeletons dressed in tie-dyed T-shirts and bellbottom jeans that still reek of scorched draft cards and half-smoked joints.
But that doesn't leave much.
So maybe we need a new rule. Not the one that says every candidate will have to undergo a character CAT-scan; not the rule that says anyone who ever made a mistake is not qualified to judge others. Those rules are for fools.
The rule we need is the one that Jimmy Carter used in 1976, when we were still hung over from Watergate: "I won't lie to you."
And this time, let's add: "I won't embarrass you, either, or disgrace the office."
Promising not to be a lying degenerate is not a very high standard. But after six years of doing the Clinton limbo -- "How low can you go?" -- it sounds like a job description for sainthood.
Texas Gov. George W. Bush, 52, has the hang of it. "Look, I'm not proud of what I did when I was 21," he told U.S. News. "None of the baby boomers can be proud of what we did then. But I've learned my lessons."
The leader of the GOP pack quit drinking one rocky morning after his 40th birthday bash. He used to chase women, but says he has been faithful to his wife since their 1977 marriage. It sounds like he did something that has been beyond the gumption of boomers like Bill Clinton: He grew up.
And the son of a president doesn't let his own past keep him from talking about responsibility today. That doesn't make him a hypocrite. It makes him a graduate of Hard Way Academy, where many of us learned from remedial experience what our parents told us all along.
Just a few footsteps behind "G.W." is Ohio's John Kasich, the House Budget Committee chairman from Columbus whose middle name is "boyish."
The Almanac of American Politics says: "Boyish-looking but hard working, aggressive but ingratiating . . . Mr. Kasich puts a cheerful yet earnest face on Republican policies and priorities." Mr. Earnest dropped by last week to promote his new book, Courage is Contagious, and himself. And he said something interesting: "Ironically, Bill Clinton has plowed the field" for boomers who follow him.
"We're in a fuzzy area now. I'm going to have to answer a lot of questions. Will it keep me from running? No. I'm not living in fear of the fact that you will be asking me all these questions," he said.
OK, so let's start asking.
What about those stories that he was a wild child in Columbus? "He didn't do anything that anyone else didn't do to have fun and enjoy life," said Michael Koren, a buddy in the mid-70s when Mr. Kasich was a legislative aide. "I was a lobbyist back then. It was a time when most of the work was done in the bars or on the golf course. That's just the way it was.
"If John stood up and said, "When I was younger I rarely went out and never drank any beer,' that would be a lie. But John wouldn't say that. He's honest to a fault, even when it hurts him."
Bob Blair talks about another side of his longtime friend: "There's nobody with more energy in the whole world. When he ran for the state Senate, we all thought he was nuts. He quit his job two years before the race. He almost starved to death. He literally went through three pairs of tennis shoes walking the district and knocking on doors."
And Mr. Kasich won a race nobody expected him to win. "People in Columbus still talk about running a Kasich-style campaign," said Mr. Koren. "That means 16-hour days."
One voter finally called to surrender to the Kasich-campaign onslaught, Mr. Koren recalled. "He said, "Tell him to quit bothering me. I've had three phone calls and six pieces of mail. I'll vote for him if he just leaves me alone.' "
But John Kasich won't leave anyone alone. He waves his arms, grins his boyish grin, makes faces and peppers his speech with "gottas," "wannas" and "you guys." Boomer talk. He can still say "cool" and it's cool.
"A lotta guys don't understand that ten-dollar analogy," he says, reaching in his pocket to peel two fives from a money clip. One, he explains, is all the money in the federal surplus that came from Social Security payroll taxes. "The other five dollars is from other taxes," he says, waving it in the air. "I think we oughtta give it back -- or it will be spent."
The Republicans chickened out on giving us back an $80 billion tax cut last week. The Kasich plan: A $700 billion tax cut -- half the surplus.
"He's always had an independent streak," said another friend, Curt Steiner, chief of staff to Ohio Gov. George Voinovich. "He's a solid Republican, but he's always had his own views. It's his unique skill to seize on an issue and explain it in a way that makes it interesting to ordinary folks. John used to make budgets interesting. That's not easy."
Mr. Steiner joked that his friend is "a biological Democrat," because his parents were Democrats. "He came from an average background. He's in touch with people. He's not a Beltway thinker."
Mr. Kasich predicts that the two biggest issues in the 2000 race will be foreign policy and "where's the power."
"This town, my town -- that's where the power oughtta be."
His philosophy about shink-wrapping the federal government and sending the leftovers to states and cities is summed up by his quip about the Clinton scandal:
"People keep saying that Lewinsky is keeping us from addressing all these important issues. My philosophy is that the less we are doing to make laws and expand government, the better off we all are."
Mr. Koren said, "Everyone likes him."
"His first wife worked on his campaign even after the divorce," said Mr. Blair. "He's the Pied Piper. We can hardly believe how far he's gone. It just blows your mind. Only in America."
Boomers in the White House. It blows your mind.
Odds are, the next president is more likely to be "G.W." Bush than John Boyish Kasich -- or maybe a Bush-Kasich ticket. But don't underestimate the sheer perseverance of stubborn, hard-working John Kasich. He will probably be bothering America, wearing out tennis shoes from now until we surrender. But his friends insist he won't lie -- or embarrass us.
We could do worse.
Bummer. We already have.
Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer. If you have questions or comments, call 768-8301, or write to 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.
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