Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! - Jesse Ventura [127]
Allow me one more history lesson. For over two hundred years, America’s third parties have promoted concepts and policies that eventually became crucial parts of our social and political lives. Women’s right to vote, child labor laws, the forty-hour work week, unemployment insurance, the Social Security Act, and “getting tough on crime”—all these ideas were first put forward by third-party candidates.
Just because there is so much against us doesn’t mean we’re not effective. Because the two parties want us to disappear so badly, they will generally focus on what brought us in. In that way, a third party can carry the agenda. Remember Ross Perot, with his pie chart and his message about the deficit and balancing the budget? That’s what Clinton and his opponents wound up putting at the top of their list. They wanted to prove to the people that you don’t need a third party; we can take care of this problem.
Is it hopeless for an independent to get anywhere at this point? I don’t think so, because, at a state level, both Angus King and I have won governor’s races. It’s interesting that Minnesota and Maine traditionally lead the nation in voter turnout—and those are the two states that have recently elected independent governors.
Angus and I used to have a lot of fun at the National Governors Association meetings in Washington. On the second day, when the two parties have their big caucuses in separate buildings, that kind of left poor Angus and me out in the cold. So we would take a very casual, beautiful walk down Constitution Avenue, sit down together on a park bench, and talk about our most important issues. I’d achieved so much notoriety that we had most everybody in the press corps following along. “Welcome to the Independent Governors Caucus,” we told them. It was hilarious.
As Angus neared the end of his second term, the media kept asking him, “Governor, what’s it going to be now, the House or the Senate?” Finally, one day, he told them, “I’m going home. I’ve spent eight years not doing some things that need to be done there.” And he walked away. The media in Maine were as baffled as when I did the same thing in Minnesota.
Angus is a brilliant man, and an honest one. If I ever did go for president, I’d sure love to talk Angus King out of retirement to run with me.
We proved that it can be done. It just takes the right circumstances and, for lack of a better phrase, you’ve got to catch the opposition with their pants down. You’ve got to sneak up on them. You’ve got to make them think you’re insignificant, not worth bothering about. You have to bring out their natural arrogance, figuring that everything is under control.
I was told that, some years later, Norm Coleman turned to a person I knew in the Republican Party when they were out to dinner one night, shook his head, and said, “What the hell did happen in ’98?” I caught them off guard. They never dreamed it could happen.
I guess time will tell whether it could again.
TERRY: I don’t think Jesse needs to do anything more in politics. I think running for president would destroy him. I don’t think that they’ll kill him, but that they’ll do the best job of character assassination they possibly can. And they’re really good at it. I just hate to see him go through it.
Whoever does win in 2008 is going to have the monumental task of spending literally his or her first four years (and maybe only four years) attempting to clean up Bush’s mess. That’s the part that shies me away from running. Our next president will inherit an unfinished war in Afghanistan and a complete quagmire in Iraq, not to mention