COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s new book, “Two Paths: America Divided or United,” provides a rare, and sometimes raw, behind-the-scenes look at being a 2016 presidential candidate.
The book, released Tuesday (Thomas Dunne Books), is roughly equal parts campaign-trail memoir, political biography and Kasich’s own self-help therapy session for living in a post-Donald Trump world.
Kasich, 64, expresses clear disappointment that his decades as a state legislator, congressman, business executive and governor failed to earn him his party’s nomination – especially over the populist billionaire Trump.
“This wasn’t how adults were supposed to act. This wasn’t how leaders were supposed to act,” he writes, fashioning the book’s final pages as an open letter to his 17-year-old twin daughters. He urges them not to be disheartened, but to “expect more” of future candidates, sidestepping whether he will be one again in 2020.
Kasich was Trump’s longest-lasting competitor in last year’s Republican primary and, since declining to endorse Trump, has remained one of the GOP’s most vocal Trump detractors. In the book, he repeats his claim that he was offered – and declined – a chance to be Trump’s vice president, a claim the Trump camp has dismissed.