Kasich on how to defeat ISIL — and Trump

Susan Page | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Kasich says Trump nomination could imperil Republican candidates down the ballot Ohio Gov. John Kasich says Donald Trump’s nomination could imperil Republican candidates down the ballot.

NEW YORK — Ohio Gov. John Kasich says 2016 rival Donald Trump has "ridden the horse called celebrity" to the head of the Republican presidential field, tapping the frustration many Americans feel about their lives.

"I think there's a degree that people are, like, saying, you know, 'I'm frustrated,' " Kasich told Capital Download. " 'I lost a lot of my wealth. I may have lost my job or my kid can't get a job and I'm really mad.' And sometimes they find a vehicle with which to, at least for a moment, express deep dissatisfaction, maybe in some ways even anger.

"But I don't think it lasts. That's not who we are as a country."

That is, he adds, "unless everything I've known in my political career and adult life is false."

With the deepest governmental résumé in the GOP field, Kasich, 63, has been particularly stung by the appetite for outsider candidates such as Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson who have never held public office before. In contrast, he is a two-term governor of the nation's quintessential swing state and a former House member who served nine terms. He chaired the House Budget Committee and served for nearly two decades on the Armed Services Committee.

In a speech Wednesday to the Council on Foreign Relations, Kasich's expertise was on display, from dissecting Pentagon budget reform to complaining that the United States was "way behind the curve" in battling cyber crimes. "They're hacking everything from our companies to our banks to our government," he declared. His prepared address didn't mention Trump's name.

When he finished speaking, however, the first question from the moderator did.

Later, in an interview with USA TODAY's weekly video newsmaker series, he blamed journalists, in part, for Trump's rise.

"Well, look, when the media just constantly drools over him and when he's — if I were on television as much as he was, I'd probably have 50% of the vote," he said. (In the latest national USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll, released Tuesday, Trump was first at 27%, Kasich tied for seventh at 2%.) "He's on television all the time. You can't help but see him there, and a big part of national polls or whatever relate to the issue of celebrity. ...

"But at the end, people want somebody to land the plane."

At the first Republican debate, Kasich and everyone in the field except Trump pledged to support the party's eventual nominee. At the Council on Foreign Relations, he reiterated his belief that Trump won't be the nominee. Asked whether he would reconsider his pledge if Trump was nominated, he replied, "Look, is it possible that you change your mind? Yeah. Takes something extreme to do it."

In the USA TODAY interview, he was asked whether "something extreme" had happened yet.

"I'm not prepared to say that, and I don't need to go there at this point in time," he said. "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it."

He acknowledged that Trump's nomination would carry risks for Republican candidates down the ballot, including Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, who faces a competitive re-election race next year.

"It matters who gets nominated," Kasich said. "If they come into Ohio divisive, they won't win."

Rejecting Trump's proposal to bar all Muslims from the United States out of hand, he outlined his own approach to dealing with global terrorism. He called for building an international coalition, increasing coordination of intelligence agencies, dealing with concerns about encryption software and tightening visa requirements. He also said U.S. ground troops would have to be deployed, "sooner or later," to defeat the self-proclaimed Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

"We have to go on the ground and in the air and destroy ISIS in a coalition," he said. "You do not reclaim territory and you don't destroy an enemy from the air. It just doesn't happen. It never has. This is a sort of fantasy and an ability to put off hard decisions. The longer we put off the hard decisions, the more complicated going there is going to mean."

While weary of long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans would support such action, he said.

"I think Americans understand this threat," he said. "They understand it's not going to go away. It's like if you have a very serious disease, it's got to be treated or it will kill you."