We probably will do worse than these two for president

What better occasion than a new year, a time of hopes and dreams, including impossible ones, to write about presidential long shots, beginning with the Democratic Party nominating James Webb for president? That’s former Sen. James Webb of Virginia, who’s currently a mere 64 points behind Hillary Clinton in a Washington Post/ABC News poll. Then, as a holiday bonus, how about the Republican Party’s Webb equivalent, John Kasich of Ohio?

Let’s start with Webb and his negatives, at least to some. He’s been married for 44 years — to three wives. He is the author of a somewhat controversial essay entitled “Why Women Can’t Fight,” in which he made the case against allowing women to engage in combat. He says he’s a firm supporter of the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms except, presumably, for women in combat. He served in the Reagan cabinet and says Ronald Reagan is one of his heroes, along with FDR. 

He has been elected to office only once, to the Senate, and quit after serving a single term. If, after Obama, another one-term senator like Elizabeth Warren isn’t very appealing, neither is Webb. If, at 68, Hillary Clinton is too old to run for president, so is he. He is dour, doesn’t like glad handing and doesn’t suffer fools gladly; and fools make up a formidable voting bloc. He has also been criticized for using PAC money to pay consulting fees to his wife and daughter. I could go on but you get the idea. There is little about James Webb to make him appeal to Democrats or other voters, except maybe the following: 

Webb is a Vietnam War hero Marine who received the second highest medal, the Navy Cross, along with a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts. He is the author of 10 books, among them, one of the great war novels, “Fields of Fire.” He opposed the war in Iraq — the first one, in 1990 — calling the region “the Bermuda Triangle of Presidencies.” He has been consistently against going to war without congressional approval and without an exit strategy.

Seven months before the second Iraq war began in 2003, Webb warned we could be in the region for 30 years and presciently noted, “The Iraqis are a multiethnic people filled with competing factions who in many cases would view a U.S. occupation as infidels invading the cradle of Islam. In Japan, American occupation forces quickly became 50,000 friends. In Iraq, they would quickly become 50,000 terrorist targets.” At that time, neither George W. Bush nor Donald Rumsfeld had considered the existence of the Sunnis and Shiites, if, indeed, they had heard of them.

•  •  •

Would you prefer a Republican long shot? If so, we offer one of the best qualified Republican candidates most people never heard of, John Kasich. 

Kasich, a youthful 62, has been married 22 years to just two wives and wife number one is said to have campaigned for him since the divorce. He is considered a RINO in some party circles, partially for his moderate to conservative record, his ability to work with Democrats and the great heresy of accepting Medicaid expansion under the auspices of Obamacare, which he describes as a fiscally conservative decision. In the first decade of the 21st century, while out of politics, he worked for two rather controversial organizations, Fox News and the late Lehman Brothers.

Kasich was once pretty well known, as a nine-term congressman who capped his House career as chairman of the Budget Committee in the Newt Gingrich Congresses of the mid to late 1990s. Working with President Clinton, he gave the country a balanced budget in 1997, and in 2000 he retired from the House in order to take a shot at the presidency. That didn’t work out as his fundraising dried up just short of the Iowa Caucus and he endorsed Bush II.

By 2009, he was ready for a political comeback and defeated a strong Democratic incumbent to become governor of recession-riddled Ohio in 2010. During his first term, Kasich reduced unemployment to 6.5 percent. He managed to eliminate an $8 billion deficit, ended his first term with a $1.5 billion surplus while cutting the state income tax by 10 percent and the taxes on small businesses by 50 percent. 

And so, for the new year and maybe even 2016, I offer two remote presidential possibilities: interesting, smart men who have little chance to be nominated by their uninteresting, dumb parties. We could do worse than James Webb or John Kasich and probably will.

Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.