Notes From D. R.

It’s been almost ten years since it happened, and I still can’t believe Jesse Ventura became the governor of Minnesota.

The former professional wrestler had already served one term as mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota in the early-1990s, but his 1998 third-party gubernatorial bid was considered a longshot, to say the least. However, Ventura took advantage of the Minnesota electorate’s disgust with politics as usual—as well as professional wrestling’s resurgent popularity—to eke out a win over Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Skip Humphrey.

I was happy for Ventura: while those who declared his victory a fusion of politics and pop-culture trash had a point, I thought there was something, well, cool about Ventura’s apparent changing of the political rules. At the time, Ventura’s victory was seen in some circles as a sign of things to come: there was an expectation that more “nontraditional” candidates would come out of nowhere to score upset victories.

Unfortunately, Ventura gradually lost support in Minnesota, alienating the electorate with a bizarre mix of conservative and liberal positions reminiscent of Richard Nixon. Ventura’s four-year tenure appeared to be one long ego trip: he seemingly spent most of his time writing books or showing up on Vince McMahon’s wrestling and football programs. He horrified political observers with a series of bizarre comments denigrating Irish Catholics, voters of faith, and those who supported having children recite the Pledge of Allegiance in Minnesota schools.  By 2002, Ventura was regarded as being cut from the same cloth as the hacks he once railed against, and with his approval rating in freefall, he announced that he would not run for a second term.

“He had two personas while he was governor,” wrote Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund shortly after Ventura made his one-and-done announcement. “He usually adopted the patriotic, dependable personality of James Janos, the name he grew up with. But always lurking nearby was the acerbic, outrageous and ego-driven Jesse Ventura, his [WWE] stage name. In the end, voters got tired of trying to keep up with both of their governors. Like all good showmen, Jesse Ventura then decided it was time to close out his act.”

Looking back, Ventura did not leave a lasting impact on American politics. Many pundits made comparisons between Ventura’s win and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s victory in the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election, but Schwarzenegger has not turned himself into a one-man circus act, as Ventura did. While Schwarzenegger is an imperfect governor, he has always shown a commitment to the people of California, whereas Ventura increasingly demonstrated a commitment to himself.

Barring a series of political miracles, we could one day describe Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick as the Bay State’s version of Ventura. While Patrick did not run as a third-party candidate, he was nevertheless seen as a political outsider, a novice candidate whose biggest claim to fame was his tenure as the head of the Clinton Justice Department’s civil rights division from 1994-96. Like Ventura, Patrick ran a grassroots, nontraditional campaign promoting the idea that he was an alternative to the usual Massachusetts hackerama.  Patrick captured the imagination of voters who had “checked out” of politics: his November 2006 win was every bit as historic (though not as shocking) as Ventura’s victory eight years earlier.

However, the same demons that possessed Ventura’s administration have also haunted Patrick’s. For the past year and a half, Bay Staters have watched as Patrick has demonstrated Ventura-style ideological inscrutability (for example, his endorsement of efforts to bring casinos to the state, a horrifying concept to his liberal base) and self-aggrandizement (skipping out on state business to put together a book deal with a New York-based publishing house), not to mention a similar fondness for foolish statements (his September 2007 speech in which he infamously declared that the 9/11 attacks were the result of a “failure of human understanding”).  Patrick was elected with fifty-six percent of the vote, but his popularity has declined significantly since then; the man who was once seen as the savior of the state is now regarded as a symbol of Massachusetts mismanagement.

Ventura was interested in running for and winning the governorship, but he wasn’t all that interested in actually being governor, except for the goodies such a position would provide. Already, one can come to the same conclusion about Patrick. He seems bored to death, desperate to find something else that will capture his fancy. Perhaps it will be the extensive book tour for his autobiography, now scheduled to be released in 2010. Perhaps it will be a plum job in an Obama administration. Perhaps it will be a run for the Senate seat currently held by the ill Edward Kennedy. Who knows? What we do know is that unless things change over the next several months, Patrick will be remembered as Massachusetts’ Jesse Ventura—a legacy he will always have to wrestle with.