Former Ohio Gov. and presidential candidate John Kasich told a Salt Lake City audience Wednesday night that America’s political turmoil is less about partisan fights and more about a deeper moral problem.
“The crisis, to me, is a crisis of character,” he said, adding a moment later, “It’s a crisis of the fact that people want these jobs too much.”
Kasich spoke Wednesday at the historic Ladies Literary Club during an event focused on religious liberty, rule of law and the role of people of faith in protecting democratic norms.
The evening was hosted by Principles First, an organization for “people who share a love of American democracy and concern for the direction of our existing conservative leadership.”
The program opened with a panel on religious liberty and closed with a conversation with Kasich, and James Neikrie, legislative director of political nonprofit Issue One, which co-hosted the event.
Throughout the night, speakers returned to a few shared themes: the need for character and courage in public life, the importance of institutions and the rule of law, and the idea that ordinary citizens — including people of faith — must take responsibility for strengthening democracy from the ground up.
Kasich: Congress, character and the cost of keeping your job
Kasich sat down for a wide-ranging conversation about separation of powers, political courage and the role of citizens.
Kasich, who served in the Ohio Legislature, the U.S. House and as governor, and ran for president in 2016, said he has seen the system from all sides. He criticized Congress for slowly giving away power to the executive branch over several administrations, calling it a long-running trend rather than a problem confined to one president.
Over time, he said, party loyalty and fear of primary challenges have made lawmakers hesitant to assert their constitutional authority on issues like war powers, immigration and tariffs.
“If you’re a Republican right now, you like to keep your job. And if you’re a Democrat, you like to keep your job,” Kasich said. Congress members, he argued, worry that if they defy party expectations “you might have a primary, and if you have a primary, you may lose.”
For Kasich, that fear is tied directly to the “crisis of character” he sees in public life.
“What that should do is give you a sense of what your mission is in life,” he said of faith and moral conviction. “Your mission in life is not to get elected to Congress and sit there and collect a paycheck. Your mission is in that job to try to do good to help our country and to help people rise.”
He said he has “been waiting for a group of renegade Republicans to sort of stand up and say, ‘I’ve had enough,’” and believes many incumbents could actually survive a primary challenge if they were willing to work harder and defend their choices.
“The worst thing is to win and do nothing,” he said. “Or to lose and do nothing.”
Kasich also warned against apocalyptic language and exaggerated fear on both sides of the political spectrum.
He described how some Trump supporters see their opponents as an “existential threat to their way of life,” while many on the left feel the same way about Trump and his movement. While he didn’t dismiss those concerns, he argued that the level of panic can cloud judgment.
“To me, it’s just such an overreaction to all of this that everybody just needs to kind of calm down a little bit,” he said.
Faith, purpose and public life
Throughout the conversation, Kasich kept returning to the idea of vocation and personal responsibility.
“You have a purpose of life, that you ought to use that purpose to do good,” he said, connecting religious faith with a sense of mission that extends beyond elections and party lines.
Kasich said he worries when pastors or religious leaders are pressured to become partisan actors. He argued that churches, synagogues and mosques are most powerful when they serve as a sort of “clubhouse” where people can gather, support one another and launch concrete efforts to help their communities — from addressing human trafficking to mental health to caring for youth.
Those kinds of local efforts, he suggested, are where faith and democracy naturally reinforce each other: people learn to work together, build trust across differences and then carry that experience into civic and political spaces.
‘Power comes from the bottom up’
Despite his concerns, Kasich said he remains fundamentally optimistic — in large part because of what he sees happening outside Washington.
“You think there’s nothing going on,” he asked the audience, pointing to recent organizing efforts, including large “No Kings” rallies, as signs that people are waking up to their own influence.
“Power does not come from the top down. Power comes from the bottom up,” he said.
As an example of Congress responding to public pressure, he cited a recent bipartisan push in the House to bring forward a bill related to Jeffrey Epstein documents that executive leadership had originally resisted.
He explained that a small group of Republicans joined Democrats, and through procedural tools and sustained pressure, the bill advanced and passed the Senate by unanimous consent.
The odds of that happening just weeks earlier, Kasich said, had been “slim and none,” but it showed what can happen when citizens and a handful of lawmakers refuse to give up.
He also praised a Senate vote to reject certain tariffs and a bipartisan social media measure that passed 91–3 as instances where Congress has asserted itself, especially on issues with a clear moral dimension, such as protecting children online.
The challenge, he argued, is to identify those kinds of issues that “touch people,” organize around them in communities and then bring that energy to elected officials.
“(Politicians) are not a leading indicator, politicians are a following indicator,” he said. “They take orders from us.”
A call to move from ‘I’ to ‘we’
Kasich closed by zooming out. Drawing on the work of political scientist Robert Putnam, he described America’s shift over the last century from a “we” culture — marked by strong civic institutions and shared sacrifice — back to a more individualistic “I” culture.
In an “I” culture, he said, it is easier for people to protect their own status, jobs or comfort than to take risks for the common good. Rebuilding a “we” culture, in his view, will require more people choosing character over convenience in their schools, congregations, neighborhoods and workplaces.
Every person, he insisted, has a role to play, even if they never run for office.
“Every single individual, a human being on Earth can bring about a change that we seek to bring about justice, equality, fairness but it’s up to us,” he said.
Religious liberty, rule of law and ‘how we show up’
A panel on religious liberty, moderated by Mormon Women for Ethical Government co–executive director Emma Petty Addams, featured former Congresswoman Claudine Schneider, former U.S. Senate candidate and BYU graduate Jared Young and historian and former CIA analyst Holly Berkley Fletcher.
Panelists described religious freedom as both personal and structural — the right to believe and practice, but also the need for laws and institutions that protect everyone’s conscience, not just one group’s.
Fletcher pointed to James Madison’s view that separating church and state protects both democracy and religion. In that spirit, she argued, “religious people should be the most — the biggest supporters of separation of church and state for their own good,” because when government tries to privilege one faith, it ultimately “is corrupting of religion, it is not good for religion.”
Young, who has lived and studied in both conservative and liberal environments, spoke about the tensions between religious liberty and fears of discrimination.
He said people on all sides of that debate carry real wounds — religious believers who feel looked down on, and LGBTQ+ people who have experienced discrimination. Starting by acknowledging each other’s pain, he suggested, makes honest dialogue more possible.
Several panelists said people of faith should model a different kind of political engagement. Young cited Latter-day Saint teachings on peacemaking and said that “anger never persuades,” arguing that the most powerful public witness believers can offer is a Christlike, compassionate tone.
Schneider urged the audience not to stop at awareness but to act.
“It’s not enough to be aware of these things,” she said. “It’s incumbent upon each of us to do something about it, to take action on it, to speak up, to demonstrate. … But we can’t be silent at this moment in time.”