NEW YORK—Except for the fight at the beginning and the argument at the end, John Kasich’s town hall at Bay Ridge Place in Brooklyn was a pretty tame affair. I didn’t even catch everything the first two guys were screaming about—one was calling the other a Democrat and saying he was spreading false information about his family—and security eventually kicked them out. Otherwise the closest thing to real aggression all night was Kasich awkwardly patting the shoulder of Montel Williams, the leather-jacketed and purple-tied talk radio host and Marine veteran who introduced him and helped field questions from the audience.

The thing about Kasich, for good or ill, is that he is the same no matter where you see him. Standing behind a banner that read "A STRONG AMERICA IS A SAFE AMERICA," he told this audience of flannels, trench coats, skinny jeans, and skull caps in the rollerblading and adult daycare capital of the world what he really thinks about federalism and immigration and drugs. He talked about being a "big God guy" and the good old days of his childhood when "we loved one another" and "it was a dream" to be able to afford Steelers tickets and everybody went to the Pirates double-header on Labor Day. "You’d sit out in the right-field bleachers, and life was great. It was fantastic." He condemned his rivals for wanting to deport illegal immigrants and "make the sand glow" and told us that when the time comes, during the general election, he will get tough on Hillary Clinton. He’ll fix the VA, too. "We need to kick a little butt—maybe a lot of butt."

The crowd was mostly polite, even when he complained about not being asked enough questions during long-ago GOP presidential debates and asked them whether they wanted to be in the Book of Life. But some of Kasich’s one-on-one interactions were painfully awkward in the way that, say, a conversation between a dad and his teenaged son would be. I felt bad when Kasich attempted to cajole the father of a tutor at the nearby Frederick Douglass Academy into explaining why the school is a success.

"You know why it works?" Kasich asked.

"Lacrosse," the tutor said without blinking. Everyone laughed. But Kasich was immune to sarcasm. "I walked in one time," he said. "I saw a bunch of African-Americans who were speaking Japanese fencing."

He had a bit more success talking about drugs. "Are you here with your buddies?" Kasich asked one member of the audience in his usual dorky paternal manner. The guy murmured his assent. "You guys go to parties? No? We’ve got a couple nerds here. Since you’re nerds I might want to introduce you to my daughters. Seriously, though, this is what I want to tell you—and tell me if this is right—you go to a party, there’s bad stuff there. Somebody’s in the back room. Peer pressure. ‘Why don’t we try?’ Don’t screw around with it." I got the sense that while the guy was not going to leave the room to toke up, he probably wouldn’t be popping in on his fellow students reminding them to Just Say No either.

Nor was the nerd Kasich’s youngest interlocutor. One question he took was from a kid who was probably four.

"How are you going to make the schools better?"

"What grade are you in?"

"Pre-K."

Oohs and affectionate moans.

"Pre-K. How’s it goin’?"

"Good."

"Are you learning how to read?" Not waiting for the kid’s response, Kasich continued: "You know how we make the schools better? When the grown-ups decide that you’re more important than the grown-ups who are working with you."

The applause for this non sequitur lasted for more than 30 seconds. Kasich wasn’t finished.

"There’s that new show that’s on TV with, umm, the guy who announced the wrong beauty winner…"

"Little Big Shots!" a woman volunteered.

"I’m looking to be a substitute host. But you know there used to be a show many, many years ago when I was just a kid. Kids Say the Darndest Things, Art Linkletter. It’s a knock-off. Anyway, back to the question—what is your name?"

"Ezra," the boy said.

"Oh, I love that. Better Than Ezra: I think there was a band called that. Is your dad here? Where is your father? You got any more like him at home? You got a winner!"

The next question was about balancing the budget. "You did it once," said a man in a green sweater. "Can you do it again?"

But Kasich was stuck on kids.

"You have to have two things to balance the budget—you have to restrain the spending and grow the economy. Now, let me have that for a second."

He reached for an object in the hand of a kid near the front. "You see this?"

"It’s a smartphone," the kid said.

"Oh, it’s a smartphone. Kids do say the darndest things. But, okay, so when my kids were eleven, I think, we were in Florida on spring break or something, and my daughters and I were walking down the street. I was taking them for ice cream. And they said, ‘Daddy, what is that box over there? I’m like, ‘Ooooh, that’s where your mom and dad used to put coins to make phone calls and where Superman changes his clothes. And they’re like, ‘No way.’"

He ended the evening with another anecdote about the time he met Richard Nixon.

"I wrote a letter to the president, basically inviting myself to the White House. I signed it ‘Sincerely, John Kasich. PS: If you want to discuss this further, I’m a college student, I’ve got time.’ And a couple of weeks later I go down to my mailbox and there’s a letter from the office of the president. I call home and my mother answers the phone. I say, ‘Mom, I’m gonna need an airline ticket. The president of the United States would like to have a meeting with me.’ My mother is shouting, ‘Honey, pick up the phone, there’s something really wrong with Johnny.’ My parents didn’t know what to think. They get me the airline ticket and I fly down to Washington. I am sitting right outside the Oval Office and a guy walks up to me and said, ‘Young man, you’re going to get five minutes alone with the president.’ I’ll tell you what I’m thinking. I’ve got a new jacket, new shirt, new tie, new pants. I didn’t come all this way for five lousy minutes. So they open up the door, I shake hands with the president of the United States. And the good news is, I spent twenty minutes alone with him as an eighteen-year-old first-quarter freshman."

He paused for a split second.

"The bad news is, I spent eighteen years in Congress, and if you add up all the time I spent in the Oval Office, I peaked at the age of eighteen."

I was glad that people laughed at this very long dad joke.