Stand for Something: The Battle for America's Soul

Summary

In Stand for Something, Kasich argues that America can recover its shared values of personal responsibility, honesty, accountability and integrity if each of us acts to "set right the moral pendulum in our own lives."

The 9-term Republican congressman criticizes politicians who are more interested in getting reelected than in serving the public good, and tears into the American elite for far too often behaving in greedy, unethical, criminal and immoral ways, appealing to the privileged to listen to their consciences and seek a higher purpose.

Among the political leaders he admires for pursuing the public good are Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ronald Reagan, each of whom he views as inspiring people "to do better in their own lives."

The book includes descriptions of his working-class childhood in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, the son of a letter carrier. He discloses to his readers that although he served as an altar boy in his childhood parish, he liked girls "too much" to seriously contemplate entering the priesthood.