Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! - Jesse Ventura [33]
It’s unique that, when you eat in the White House, you don’t sit with your spouse. You get randomly placed, and that’s done intentionally because they want different people to meet. The food was excellent, as you might imagine. When the meal is over, the president gets up and gives a talk, and then you all adjourn to the East Wing, down the hall, where the entertainment will be. Generally, there’s some type of dancing. One time with Clinton, it was Kenny G. This first night we were there, though, was more the Glenn Miller ballroom-type music. Which isn’t my cup of tea, but I can live with it.
When Terry and I walked into the room, the President and Hillary were dancing. No one else was out there. It was like no one wanted to even enter their space. I turned to Terry and said, “What will you give me to walk up to them and cut in?” She grabbed my arm, gritted her teeth, and whispered, “Don’t you dare!”
So I grabbed her and said, “Fine, if I can’t cut in, then come on!”
I figured, by God, I’ll break the ice! I’m the independent, anyway. I won’t get chastised by any upper echelon of the party. I took Terry out onto the floor and we started dancing right next to Bill and Hillary. When the music ended, naturally they turned to us and we engaged in a great conversation, talking intimately for a couple of minutes. I told them about my very first proclamation as governor, which had been to declare February fifteenth “Rolling Stones Day” in Minnesota. They thought that was great.
Looking back on it, I still wish I would have walked up and tapped the president on the shoulder, just to see what he would have done. I think they would have found my cutting in very humorous. Terry now says she should have let me do it.
TERRY: Then they had a big thing where all the First Ladies went out to Mount Vernon for a luncheon. At the end, everybody got to meet Hillary and have their picture taken with her. I’m talking to one of the First Ladies behind me in the line when, all of a sudden, before my name is even mentioned, Hillary says, “Terry!” She knew my first name? She grabbed my hand, looked me in the eye, and said, “I have been so worried about you.” I said, “You’ve gotta be kidding.” I went mute. She went on and on about having seen my picture and how concerned she was for how I was holding up. “Uh huh, uh huh,” was all I could say. I was like a total country bumpkin.
The second time I went to the White House, I brought along my chief of staff, because I thought it would be a good perk for him. When we went to be greeted by Bill and Hillary this time, as soon as I shook her hand, Hillary said, “And how are Terry and the horses doing?” They’d met only once, a year earlier.
I said, “Mrs. Clinton, how do you know that Terry has horses?”
She said, “Oh, I keep an eye on Terry. I don’t want anything bad to happen to her.”
I’m stunned, thinking: This woman as First Lady meets how many people a day, 365 days a year? And she not only remembers your first name, but the fact that you train horses? Unbelievable, this woman’s memory!
At one point I leaned in and asked her, “Madame First Lady, are you sure you want to run for the Senate? Are you positive you want to do this?”
She just laughed and said, “Yeah!”
Toward the middle of my term, I spent a night in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House. It came about because I had teased President Clinton—were we never going to play golf together? And he’d said sometime we would. He found out that I was in Washington for a couple of days, testifying before Congress on the issue of international trade. Then his security called my security with a surprise invitation. The message was: President Clinton was returning from a trip that