Jesse Ventura - Dont Start the Revolution Without Me!

A man does what he mustin spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressuresand that is the basis of all human morality.

President John F. Kennedy

The reason why I didnt go for president as an independent in 2008 is quite simple: Vince McMahon never got back to me. He didnt even give me the courtesy or respect of a return phone call, and I havent spoken to him since. I cant compete against the Democrats and Republicans on their level, with their rules. Id have had to do it my own way and, for lack of a better phrase, using some type of gimmick like I proposed to Vince. Then, once I achieved ballot access in all 50 states, I dont think it would have required me to raise that much moneyif I were allowed to debate.

Anyway, it didnt happen. Now the two parties are already talking about whos running in 2012. Excuse me, didnt we just get through two years of this? Give us a break! How about passing a law that says youre not allowed to begin campaigning until the year of the election? I think the majority of people in the country would be all for that! Also, like I said earlier in the book, if you hold one office and decide to run for another, how about making a law that you have to resign the one youre holding? You shouldnt have a different rulebook for the public sectorfor something youd never be allowed to do in the private one.

My decision about whether to run for the Senate in Minnesota against Norm Coleman and Al Franken was a much more difficult one to make. I seriously thought about it, and I was torn. Did I want to disrupt my whole life? Let me put it like this, so you truly understand how I feel: Im a free spirit. For me, to decide to go to Washington would be the equivalent of someone knowingly violating their parole and then having to go back to jail to serve out their six-year sentence. Thats how much distaste I have for the leadership of this country and the Democrats and Republicans. I dont even like those people, so why would I want to go hang with them for six years? However, my patriotism also entered into the pictureif not me, then who? I felt that Coleman and Franken were both very vulnerable, and I could have beat them.

The day before the filing deadline in the middle of July, I appeared on Larry King . I talked about the double standard that any third-party candidate faces and also about the polls showing that Id have a strong chance of winning. I also talked about the way the media had attacked my son, with absolutely no justification, when I was governor. And about how my daughter was afraid the same thing might happen to her. So I did not want to put my family in that position again.

I did tell Larry there was only one way I might change my mind over the next twenty-four hoursand that was if God spoke to me. My brother called me after the show and said that was brilliant, because Id left myself the only out that couldnt be criticized. Nobody wants to question the existence of God, no matter how idiotic it might be, right? Well, later that night I looked at Larrys Web site. It showed him with arms out and looking up to the heavens, saying something like, God, if youre listening, please call Jesse Ventura tonight to get him in the Senate race! When I saw that, I rolled over and laughed. I loved Larrys humor, and I think he was being sincere.

So I was still in a quandary. Half of me said to run, the other half said its not worth doing this again to yourself and your family. It was four oclock the next afternoon and filing ended by five, and it was a half-hour drive. Thats when my wife Terry looked at me and said, Well, youve always believed in fate and destiny, havent you?

I said, Yes.

And she said, Then why dont you flip a coin?

I looked at her for a moment and then said, Youre right. Well let fate and destiny decide.

So I grabbed a quarter. We have a very hard-carpeted floor where a coin will flip and land without any question over the outcomeits gonna be either heads or tails. I walked out into the middle of that floor, turned to Terry, and said, Okay. Heads I run, tails I dont.

She said okay. I flipped the quarter up in the air and it came down tails.

I looked at her and said, Im not running, lets move on. If it had come down heads, I wouldve gotten in the car, drove downtown, and filed.

Then Terry was actually the weaker of the two of us. You dont want to make it two out of three? she asked.

I said, No, thats worthless, its not fate and destiny then.

My only further comment on the Senate race is what I hear on the street from people since the election, which ended in a deadlock between Franken and Coleman: We wouldnt be having this recount if youd have run. If Ive heard that once, Ive heard it twenty times. But I chew them out. I tell them, Look, you had a candidateDean Barkleyand you chose not to vote for him. Dean stood for what I stand for. Its your fault. I just wonder when people are going to start really learning whats going on locally, statewide, and federally, and step beyond the garbage theyre told by television.

Two months before the election, I spoke at Ron Pauls Rally for the Republic in Minneapolis. Thousands of people turned out, which tells me theres an awful lot of folks looking for an alternative to the two parties. I wore my Navy SEAL T-shirt and talked about a whole bunch of things that piss me offthings that Ive delved into in this book: from the national debt, to the need for opening up the presidential debates, to the cover-up around 9/11, and the travesty of the Patriot Act. If you want to be patriotic, I told them, then stand up for the Bill of Rights!

Lets get the revolution going, I said. If I see it start to rise up over the next two to three years, and if this country show me that its worth it for me to do it, well then maybe Ill run for president in 2012. The crowd went nuts.

Right now Im working on a few television pilots, returning somewhat to my old job of entertaining. On one of these Im a judgewhich, having named seventy-three judges when I was governor, I guess I could be. The other is on the Tru Network, which used to be Court TV, and its a show about conspiracies.

How do I feel today about running for the highest office in the land? Im not Nostradamus; I cant predict the future. I dont know where Ill be or what will motivate me in 2012. A lot of it will depend on Obama. I mean, Im not gonna run for president just to runI dont want the job that bad. If Obama does a great job and can turn this economy around, get us out of these wars, and bring back our respect among the international community again, theres no reason for me to run. If Obama cant do that, then there may be. And Ill tell you this much: Id give them a race theyd never forget!