Ohio Governor John Kasich wanted to be president, and over the last couple of years, he’s done everything he can to convince me that we dodged a serious bullet.

Most recently was his opposition to Ohio’s Stand Your Ground bill. He threatened to veto it, so Republicans caved and sent a watered-down version that went to his desk.

In a recent interview, however, Kasich talks about his career after leaving office and his thoughts on the new bill.

Departing Ohio Gov. John Kasich seemingly wants it both ways.

The Trump-bashing Republican, long in demand on TV political talk shows, thinks it “likely” he will end up in the news media, hopefully in some “unique” role on television.

That kind of makes you wonder how much of his opposition is heartfelt and how much is predicated on the idea that the media will like him if he’s a critic of President Trump, doesn’t it?

I mean, sure, it could be legitimate, but it seems clear that he’s pretty preoccupied with trying to be a media darling instead of supporting and defending the Constitution as he swore to do.

Then, there’s the gun thing.

With his governorship ending Jan. 13, Kasich also signaled he would veto a gun bill headed to his desk, even after majority Republican lawmakers stripped out the controversial stand-your-ground provision that would have removed the duty to retreat unless there was no alternative to using lethal force in self-defense. Instead, he is getting a bill that primarily only changes the burden of proof from the defendant to the prosecution if force is used.

“That somehow makes the bill OK? I didn’t get that,” Kasich said. “Just with stand-your-ground being gone, how about the rest of the bill?

“When you start shifting the burden (of proof) away from somebody who does the shooting to now a prosecutor, that’s a change. I don’t know, why did they want to change that? What’s the purpose of it?”

I guess I get to break out a basic civics lesson for a sitting governor, and a Republican one at that. I’m not used to this particular set of circumstances lately, but here it goes.

In our system, people are considered innocent until proven guilty. That means it’s up to the prosecution to tell a jury of their peers – you know, fellow citizens who aren’t part of the criminal justice system – why someone is guilty. That person gets to refute the accusations as well, and then the jury decides.

What the Ohio legislature did was tell the prosecutors that it’s their job to prove guilt.

Oh, I know they don’t see it that way, but why would they? If someone acts in self-defense, it shouldn’t be up to them to prove it. It should be up to the prosecution to prove that they could have retreated but didn’t. That’s part of establishing guilt, right?

This isn’t rocket science.

Yet Gov. Kasich doesn’t seem to comprehend that. Does he not understand it, or does his potential new career in television require that he not get it?