Politicians are supposed to pretend that a favorable verdict was perfectly natural and inevitable. When I raised the African American vote with Kasich, he responded, “I’m flabbergasted by it.” Disarming candor is Kasich’s stock in trade. And a decisive electoral victory has liberated someone who already had few inhibitions.

Describing his policy-oriented, aspirational campaign, Kasich told me, “When I first started, my staff completely freaked out. ‘How are you going to get any excitement without talking about Obama?’ We are too caught up in ideology and partisanship in this country. When I said [during the campaign] that we need to respect the president of the United States, the reporter [for the Associated Press] nearly passed out.

“We need to show more respect, not anger. This is not a wrestling match. There have been too many hardened hearts in this country: ‘You are my enemy, just because you don’t think the way I think.’ I don’t even know how we got here. At the end of the day, it means that my side is not always totally right and the other side totally wrong.”