Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! - Jesse Ventura [132]
Now we got heavy into politics. We both spoke about how outraged we are concerning what’s happening in America today. We talked about the “war on terror.” Robert said the Iraq War has done nothing but create more terrorists. When I described myself as a fiscal conservative who is liberal on social issues, Mary said, “That describes Bobby, too.” We seemed to be finding considerable common ground between us.
About this time, not too far offshore, we saw a spout, and then a whale breach, landing again with a huge splash. For a little while, we took turns on the balcony looking through a binocular telescope at a mother humpback and her calf. “They’re here early,” I said. It seemed like a good omen.
Sitting down again, I looked across at Robert and asked him, matter-of-factly: “Do you want to run the country?”
“What did he say?” Mary responded.
Robert stood up. After a pause, he said quietly: “Yeah, I want to.”
He added that someone with the Green Party had asked him to consider becoming its candidate in 2008.
“Oh, don’t do what Nader did!” I told him. “You should leave the Democrats and run with me as an independent.”
Was I serious? Robert looked at me quizzically.
“I’m the most powerful man in America!” I announced. “Do you know why?”
“Why?” Mary asked, wide-eyed.
“Because I’m the only one who can unite both parties against me!”
We were hot into this when Finn, who was doing headstands behind us, suddenly crashed into the ping-pong table and raised a big welt on his foot. Mary said she’d better run upstairs and get some ice.
I realized it was time to go.
First, though, I approached Robert, who was also standing on the stairs, one more time. Again I urged him to go independent.
“I am independent,” he said. “You should become a Democrat.”
“I’d lose all my credibility!” I exclaimed.
“We’ll keep talking about it,” Robert said.
On my way out the door, he came over and gave me a big bear-hug, then walked us out to my car. I confided in him that I had a secret plan, for getting on the ballot in all fifty states. “Look, if you count when Bush’s father was vice president, we’ve had nothing but Bushes and Clintons around the White House since 1980. Twenty-seven years! That’s more like a monarchy than a democracy, don’t you think?”
“I never thought of that,” Robert said.
“And now, in 2008, I warn you—we could end up with Hillary and Jeb!” (This was before Jeb’s brother’s popularity plunged to an all-time low for a sitting president.) Robert shook his head. He stood on his front step and saluted, with a big grin on his face, as I drove away.
Heading home that night, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. If Robert Kennedy, Jr., ever ran for president as a Democrat, it would be no surprise to anyone. Just another Kennedy going for the brass ring. But if, because he can’t stand what’s happened to politics today, he left the party and ran as an independent, it would—to borrow a phrase from Muhammad Ali—shock the world.
For a minute, I thought about leaking it to the media. Jesse Ventura and Robert Kennedy, Jr., meeting in Mexico to talk about the fate of America. Then I thought better of it. I hoped I was right about this much: we’d each of us made a new friend.
Headline: JESSE VENTURA CONSIDERING 2008 WHITE HOUSE RUN
Refreshed from a semester as a visiting professor at Harvard University, former pro wrestler and Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura says he’s considering an independent run for the White House in 2008, although he acknowledges that being leader of the free world might be too confining for him.
“That’s an issue with me. I love my freedom,” Ventura said in an interview with the Associated Press at his office at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. “The part that would bug me is I wouldn’t be able to get up in the night and drive to the 7-11 for a Slurpee, not without them blocking off the roads, welding the manhole covers shut, and everything else that goes along with it.”
Ventura