Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) holds a press conference with reporters during a visit to the Republican National Committee Spring Meeting on April 20 in Hollywood, Fla. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Pundits have puzzled over why John Kasich — popular Ohio governor, former congressman and presidential candidate untempted by name-calling and hand-size comparisons — has gained so little traction among the Republican base.

I finally figured out why.

It’s because he’s running as the Republican Obama.

In a wide-ranging meeting with The Post’s editorial board this week, Kasich answered many of our policy and political questions with some version of the following: In today’s intolerably polarized climate, he will bring people together to work out their differences.

Kasich spoke of uniting rather than dividing, of including rather than excluding, of the importance of listening to and learning from those we disagree with, and of reconciling with our ideological enemies in service to the greater good.

Republican presidential candidate John Kasich met with The Washington Post editorial board on April 20. This is a full audio recording of that conversation. (Adriana Usero)

“See I think what’s happened, in the country, is, ‘I have my thing, you have your thing, you’re an idiot, you’re wrong, and screw you.’ Okay, that’s where I think we’ve gone,” he said at one point. “And I think we need to get to, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Okay, I got your opinion, I got all these economists’ opinion, can we just like sit down here? And let me learn a little bit from you, and you learn a little bit from me, and let’s put something together that’s solid.’ ”

He repeated this message when talking about why the White House has been unable to get Congress on board with some of its policy initiatives. He blamed “an inability to show respect, an inability to include people.”

And in response to a thorny question about the battle between the tech community and law enforcement over encryption, he said that rather than propose a solution himself, he’d force the two sides to hammer out a compromise.

“I’d lock them in a room and they’d never come out until they had a solution,” he declared, noting that similar tactics had succeeded in his home state.

In other words, Kasich plans to show leadership by inspiring, stepping back and letting others hug it out. (At one point he even touted the fact that people cry and “hug each other” at his town halls.) Kasich, as mediator in chief, would fix Washington and beyond by encouraging people to get along.

If this rhetoric sounds familiar, that’s because it’s nearly identical to what President Obama pledged to do in 2008.

“What I think is most important is that we recognize that to solve the key problems that we’re facing, if we’re going to solve two wars, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, if we can — if we’re going to focus on lifting wages that have declined over the last eight years and create jobs here in America, then Democrats, independents and Republicans, we’re going to have to be able to work together,” then-Sen. Obama said in a 2008 presidential debate.

Republican presidential candidate John Kasich talks to The Washington Post about the race to win delegates, Donald Trump and race relations in the U.S. (The Washington Post)

“And what is important is making sure that we disagree without being disagreeable,” he continued. “And it means that we can have tough, vigorous debates around issues. What we can’t do, I think, is try to characterize each other as bad people. And that has been a culture in Washington that has been taking place for too long.”

This play-nice message played pretty well in 2008. But while Obama had some high-profile mediator in chief moments early on (remember the “beer summit”?), he ultimately failed to knit together the “two Americas,” which have only splintered further during his tenure.

Today the body politic is arguably more divided than it was eight years ago. But now Americans have no appetite for executive-level political peacemaking. We don’t want compromise or conciliation; we want to obliterate the other side.

This is especially true of Republicans.

When a January Monmouth University poll asked what causes more problems in the federal government, elected officials who are not willing to stand up for their principles or elected officials who are not willing to compromise, 54 percent of Republicans named abandoned principles, and just 36 percent named unwillingness to compromise. (The shares for Democrats were 25 percent and 68 percent, respectively.)

Hence the appeal of Donald Trump’s promises to cede no ground, along with his exploitation of racial, ethnic, religious and ideological fault lines. Likewise for Ted Cruz’s anthem celebrating political division: “I don’t think what Washington needs is more compromise, I think what Washington needs is more common sense and more principle.”

In this context, and in this party, Kasich’s folksy promises to bridge partisan divides don’t just sound naive; they also sound downright treasonous.