Atkinson, N.H.
John Kasich walked into a small conference room at the Atkinson Country Club this morning and was greeted by a polite crowd of roughly forty people. Which is actually kind of impressive; the venue was tucked away in a nest of winding back roads and Granite Staters woke up to a snowstorm troublesome enough to cancel area schools. (It would have shut down Washington, D.C., for 48 hours.)
Kasich spoke for just eight minutes—half of which he spent bantering with a pair of kids who were ready to go sledding—and then took questions from a group of voters who seemed neither hostile, nor enthusiastic. There was no excitement. No real message, even. Except that Kasich is not like any of the other Republicans; he's a good technocrat. With a heart. He actually says, that, by the way: "Because of where I came from—because if the wind blew the wrong way, people found themselves out of work—you get a good heart because of it."
He's such a technocrat that Kasich comes across like a No Labels candidate. Literally. The words "Democrat" and "Republican" pass his lips only once or twice. He never says either "conservative" or "liberal." He begins his remarks by insisting, "First of all, just to get things out of the way, people talk about 'are you establishment or anti-establishment.' That's kind of what the thing is today. You know, I'm neither."
So what is Kasich? "I'm an idea person," he says. He wants to "solve problems." He wants us to "listen to one another a little bit." He's worried about America, but not too worried. "I think the basic strength of our country is good," he says. "The basics of our economy are very strong."
All of which makes Kasich more or less unique among the field. Nobody—Republican or Democrat—is selling what he's selling. And there is likely to be a market for it.
Not a huge market, perhaps. The RealClear average has him essentially tied for third place in New Hampshire. The last six polls have him between 9 and 14 percent, basically the same range as Jeb Bush. But unlike Bush, who's embroiled in his own one-sided war with Marco Rubio, Kasich is running his own race. He doesn't mention any of the other candidates. Or the current president, even. He's like the platonic ideal of the non-partisan moderate.
Before you roll your eyes at that, consider this: In 2012 Jon Huntsman ran a snarky, low-energy version of this campaign. The difference is that Kasich is a reasonably personable human being who seems to enjoy meeting people and Huntsman was so aloof and dejected that in the final week it was difficult to actually find him—he would breeze into events and literally duck out the back door before voters could find him to talk to him.
And for his troubles, Jon Huntsman got 41,964 votes—good for 17 percent and third place.
It's tough to guess where Kasich might finish. No one is gunning for him; no one is actively trying to take his voters. But by the same token, his pitch doesn't seem directed at anyone else's supporters, either. Bush and Christie are probably the candidates with the most overlap, though it's hard to know.
In a way, the Kasich campaign is like a ghost ship. You don't know who's on it, or who it might collide with. But you know that come next week, it's likely to disappear into the mists.