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He should be smart, witty, tough, and a just plain no-nonsense presence. You’ve all seen him a lot on television in the last few years. He was born in Pennsylvania, has grown up in Ohio (which he represented in Congress for his allotted terms), and would be just as perfectly credible in Detroit as in the beautiful rolling hills of rural Michigan. He is the perfect Ohio-Michigan-Pennsylvania candidate, John Kasich.

I am not the first to recommend Mr. Kasich, even on NRO. But I do so with calm confidence in his superior qualities and common touch — and his zest for down-to-earth political argument. The kind of guy — we used to say where I grew up in Pennsylvania — you could trust, back-to-back, in a barroom brawl.

I would respectful request that Prof. Novak retract his blog post, as Ohio needs him in the governor’s office instead.

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COLUMBUS, Ohio — Randy Pepper is a City of Columbus employee, with a litany of OVI convictions on his driving record. But despite those convictions, he had a valid driver’s license when he was hired by the city — and is allowed to drive city vehicles.

In fact, Pepper was driving a city vehicle when, police said, he ran a red light, causing a COTA bus to go off the road, injuring several passengers.

NBC 4 asked the city to explain why they aren’t more strict about the driving records of city employees who are using vehicles paid for with your tax money, NBC 4’s Lauren Diedrich reported.

The crash occurred on 11th Avenue and Summit Street in June.

Pepper paid a fine and was cited for running a red light. But it’s Pepper’s other traffic violations that’s raising concerns. From 1981 to 1996, Pepper was convicted of five OVIs. He worked on and off for the city during that time and was rehired by the department of public utilities in 1996.

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Ken Blackwell, the former mayor of Cincinnati and a black Republican who was elected three times to statewide office in Ohio, said Obama’s challenge should not be chalked up to race.

“It’s more of an unfamiliarity thing,” Blackwell observed. “You’re asking for something that is very precious to most of them, their vote.”

Like Wilder and Gantt, Blackwell started his first statewide race in 1994, for state treasurer, by emphasizing his biography, talking about his service on the Cincinnati City Council, as mayor and as Ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

He also found common ground with voters who needed to be assured it was there before voting for a black candidate.

“When I went wild turkey hunting with Bob Evans [in rural southeast Ohio] and folks saw that I had familiarity with my over-under [shotgun], they said, “Ohhh, ok,” Blackwell recalled with a chuckled. “There was some element of commonality.”

Rural white voters down along the West Virginia border, he recalled, were interested in his family, his church, and his sports allegiances.

“I was not encountering a challenge just based on color,” he said.

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State and local officials were blind sided. Wilmington’s mayor was even on a courtesy visit to the company’s headquarters in Germany when he heard the news. Clearly, this was a poor public relations move on the part of the company.

Enter Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher, current director of the Ohio Department of Development and former Attorney General. Faced with impending job cuts by Continental Airlines in Cleveland and the closure of yet another auto plant in Dayton, Fisher decided to take a strong, visible stand.

Plan A? Sue DHL. That’s right. Bog down DHL’s attempt to cut costs and remain competitive by swamping the company in litigation and claiming its decision to move business to UPS violates the nation’s antitrust laws.

Read the rest of his column here. He also takes some well deserved shots at the New Deal-like “stimiulus package” which no Ohio Republican elected office holder should have voted for if their goal was to stay true to the principles of their party.

Companies won’t want to move to Ohio if they fear being attacked by Ohio politicans if they dare to adjust their business model or make their business more efficient. It also appears that the best way to encourage development in Ohio would be to totally eliminiate the overbearing Department of Development.

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Rep. Josh Mandel (R- Lyndhurst) talks about what is going on in Iraq. And it turns out that Josh should be considered an honorary sponsor of Rep. John Adams’ bill to scrap the state income tax, as he wanted to be a co-sponsor but didn’t return from Iraq in time to sign onto it. That would of taken the number of sponors and co-sponsors of HB 534 up to 20.

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On another serious matter facing all Ohioans, Strickland said the state has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs because of skyrocketing fuel costs, and will lose more if something isn’t done about it. “I don’t believe it’s the free market at work,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a supply and demand situation,” he continued, pointing out that the world crude oil supply now isn’t significantly different than it was several years ago.

In his opinion, “Human greed is the answer.” The effects of energy speculators has driven the cost to its phenomenal highs, and Strickland is hoping for government intervention. “I hope legislators do something, but I don’t know if they will,” he said. “It’s estimated that up to 1 trillion dollars in wealth this year is being transferred from our nation to the Middle East.” He concluded by pointing out the trend cannot continue. “We just can’t sustain that.”

But as Larry Kudlow pointed out a couple weeks ago, speculators serve a useful purpose:

Oil futures markets have contracts that run out five years and beyond. If these traders — or “speculators” — believe new oil supplies are on the way in the future, they will sell those out-year contracts. And before long market arbitragers will backward-ize those price drops toward the spot market, bringing prices down there as well.

In other words, trader/speculators can be very handy instruments of energy (and economic) policies. If demand exceeds supply they are buyers. But a prospective future supply increase makes them sellers. In a free market prices move both ways.

I suppose Ted didn’t spend too much time on economics at the Asbury Theological Seminary, and it is scary to think that the leader of our state doesn’t understand economics.

Speculators, just like other middlemen and unlike liberal pandering politicans, act rationally to new information and serve a useful purpose in the marketplace. Speculation means that people are simply trying to account for what risk the future holds and try to make a profit… and is the basis of the world’s stock and commodities markets. Speculators reduce uncertainty, and help the market gradually adjust for increases in demand for oil in China and other countries, issues regarding limited access to oil during times of war, and adjust for inflation.

And speculators can also have an impact in lowering the cost of oil IMMEDIATELY, if they see that Congress is allowing oil companies to drill in domestic areas.

Instead of blaming speculators, or George Bush, Ted Strickland shouldg point his uneducated finger at himself. Because at every turn, Gov. Ted Strickland while serving as an unnoticeable congressman from Appalachia, voted to oppose domestic gas exploration and the construction of new oil refineries, which is what American oil companies need if we are going to see cheaper oil.

For example, in 1993, then-Congressman Ted Strickland voted for HR 2264, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, the largest tax increase in history (Roll No. 199, 05/27/93; Roll No. 406, 08/05/93). This bill, which retroactively hiked taxes by $241 billion, increased taxes on gasoline by 30 percent and extended a 2.5-cent per gallon increase of the motor fuels tax through 1999.

And when the opportunity to repeal these exorbitant tax rates arose, Ted Strickland voted to keep gas taxes right where they were: Strickland opposed H.Amdt.551 to the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, which provided for a four-year plan to phase out all but $0.03 per gallon of the federal gasoline tax Roll No. 97, 04/01/98).

And here is what OnTheIssues.org has to say about Strickland’s voting record on energy:

• Ted Strickland voted NO on keeping moratorium on drilling for oil offshore. (Jun 2006)
• Ted Strickland voted NO on scheduling permitting for new oil refinieries. (Jun 2006)
• Ted Strickland voted NO on authorizing construction of new oil refineries. (Oct 2005)
• Ted Strickland voted YES on prohibiting oil drilling & development in ANWR. (Aug 2001)
• Ted Strickland voted YES on starting implementation of Kyoto Protocol. (Jun 2000)

Of course the Ohio media will never talk about this, and a race car event may not be the place that one could have a serious policy discussion. But if Ted Strickland’s perspective on oil is typical among most politicans, the best thing our elected leaders can do is to literally do nothing.

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I think Jon handled himself well, and plenty of college students will be voting for John McCain, as this is a center-right country.

But I will never buy into this “youth vote” hype, and the apathetic young adults interviewed in the video clip are more like a majority of their peers. The youth vote turnout percentage is always lower than the general population, and efforts to turnout young voters are simply auxiliaries of the Democrat Party. The left has been hoping for youth movements to throw Republicans out of office since the voting age was lowered to 18 in 1972, but it thankfully never seems to work out for them.

The Fox News special goes on to talk about Facebook activism, how cool young Democrats think it is that Barack Obama admitted to using “some blow”, and how neat it is that John McCain’s daughter blogs in a surprisingly informal fashion.

For the sake of America’s future, just in case they really do want to turn out in large numbers, I think it would be best for my generation to be locked in their houses on election day.

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