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In many ways, the hyperkinetic Kasich--whose name, he points out, rhymes with basic--is the perfect general for this most crucial campaign of the Gingrich Revolution. At 42, the youngest committee chairman on Capitol Hill embodies both the brashness and the energy of the new generation of conservatives. Kasich may be the only Congressman ever evicted from the stage at a Grateful Dead concert. (A misunderstanding, he says of the 1991 dustup at Washington's R.F.K. Stadium: he had been invited onstage by his friend, country star Dwight Yoakam, the Dead's warm-up act.) He has also been known to break up the monotony of long flights by unfolding his six-foot frame in the aisle and doing push-ups.
With his dark suits and wing tips, Kasich evokes Chamber of Commerce orthodoxy--or he would if he ever managed to run a comb through his bowl-cut hair, which makes him look like an unruly teenager. He also has a penchant for the goofy. One Budget Committee brainstorming session opened to the strains of Wooly Bully punctuated by a Nerf gunfight between Budget staff members and lobbyists. He will wave a toy hatchet at an interviewer one moment and say earnestly the next: ``I want you to believe this, too, that intellectually what we're talking about is right.''
With his zeal for doing the unpopular, Kasich takes much of the political heat off Gingrich. At the same time, however, he risks finding himself the fall guy if things go badly. He conceded as much at a hearing this month when he publicly commiserated with Rivlin, who lost internal battles at the White House over whether the Administration should opt for further deficit reduction. ``I hope you'll be the only one in this city that will lose this fight this year,'' Kasich told Rivlin. ``But you know what? I've got a feeling that there will be some others of us that will lose some fights along the way that will break our hearts like this fight, I believe, broke your heart.''
The son of a mailman from the blue-collar town of McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, Kasich, in an act of college rebellion upon reaching Ohio State University, rejected his Democratic roots in favor of the populist, antibureaucratic doctrine. But whatever complaints he may have about government, he nonetheless has spent his entire career on the public payroll. (``I'm going to end up in the private sector,'' he vows. ``At some point, I'm out of this.'') His first job after graduating from college in 1974 was as an aide in the state senate, and within four years he had won a seat there. In 1982 he beat a weak incumbent in eastern Columbus and entered Congress--the only Republican to beat a Democrat that recession-racked year.