When I first saw Gov. Jim Rhodes on the campaign trail in 1978, I found him hard to take seriously. He was a jowly man who bellowed about jobs, seemed delighted with his lack of sophistication, and dragged Asian trade delegations to eat at Wendy’s.

I came from a state which had a cultured, sophisticated, Yale-educated governor, and couldn’t understand why the voters of a major industrial state would elect a clownish buffoon not once, but four times, to Ohio’s highest office.

Years later, when I was assigned to write a major piece on him as he prepared to leave office, I began to realize that the man was much more complicated than that. For one thing, though he dropped out of Ohio State University after a single semester of mostly failing grades, he had done more than anyone in history to transform, modernize, and build higher education in this state.

And if he may have forced bewildered Japanese delegations to eat fast-food hamburgers in the morning, he was responsible for Honda coming to Marysville and creating thousands of jobs.

No governor in Ohio’s history served longer, loved the job more, or made more of an impact on the state than James Allen Rhodes.

Now, too long after his death in 2001, he finally has a biography worthy of him. Longtime statehouse reporters Tom Diemer, Lee Leonard, and the late Richard Zimmerman collaborated on James A. Rhodes: Ohio Colossus (Kent State University Press: 242 pages. $34.95).

Ohio Colossus was a long time in the making; Zimmerman died more than six years ago. Yet though the book has three authors, it is remarkably seamless. Writers know that the shortest and best works take longer to write, and in many ways, this is a masterpiece of political biography. Most such books are too long. This is a succinct and highly readable story of Rhodes’ life and remarkable career.

The orphaned son of a minor mine superintendent, he came from an upbringing so poor and chaotic he and a surviving sister couldn’t even agree on how many siblings they had.

But he determined early on to “be somebody,” and chose politics, with one aim: To be governor.

He finally got there, after stints as mayor of Columbus and state auditor, defeating the incumbent, Toledo native Mike DiSalle, in a 1962 landslide, an election in which The Blade, which previously had supported DiSalle, famously endorsed Jim Rhodes.

That may or may not have led to the new governor’s decision to establish the former Medical College of Ohio, but Rhodes made good on his “Blueprint for Brainpower” platform which, among other things, led to the establishment of the Ohio Board of Regents to coordinate state funding and programming for higher education in the state.

Rhodes’ first two terms as governor (1963-1971) were largely a series of successes, most made easier by Republican majorities in both houses of the General Assembly. However, his second two terms (1975-83) may be more instructive as a guide to governance.

After winning a stunning upset in 1974, Rhodes took office again in an era in which Democrats had huge legislative majorities. The story, ably rendered here, of how he built solid and productive working majorities with the Democratic leadership is worth considering by any student of politics, including those in office today.

Rhodes was far from perfect, and this biography makes no attempt to cover up his flaws. He had virtually no understanding of the importance of the environment, at least until he left office and became crazily obsessed with trying to invent a germ-free house.

This book, like all books, isn’t perfect either; the authors may not have gone far enough to establish Rhodes’ share of the responsibility for the May 4, 1970, shootings at Kent State.

They also give one of his more bizarrely nutty ideas — building a bridge across Lake Erie — rather more credibility than it deserves.

But Diemer, Leonard, and Zimmerman do note that despite the myths, the voters didn’t always love him. Few remember now, but while Rhodes was elected governor four times, he was defeated in his first two tries for governor, in 1950 and 1954, and suffered a landslide defeat in a sadly pathetic try for a fifth term in 1986.

Republican voters also denied him nomination to the U.S. Senate in 1970. He often was what the Dayton Daily News once said — part P.T. Barnum, part Elmer Gantry, part Norman Vincent Peale.

Sometimes that played well, but by the end of his career, it no longer sold, and the colossus was reduced to a parody of himself, disgracefully bashing the gay community in a futile effort to win votes.

But at his peak, he was a very shrewd political operator who knew himself, knew his state, and said, more than once, “Ohioans want a job, and they want to be left alone.”

He gave them something else too: As one longtime observer says here, he made them proud to be from Ohio, proud to be who they were. Jim Rhodes never forgot who he was, either. “He never lost sight of what mattered most. He would make it happen,” former Gov. Bob Taft, one of his less successful successors, mused.

There’s more than one lesson in his life for our time.

Jack Lessenberry, a member of the journalism faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit, is The Blade’s ombudsman and columnist who writes on issues and people in Michigan.

Contact him at: omblade@aol.com.

First Published January 18, 2015, 5:00 a.m.