Gov. Ventura's Press Bashing Comes to an End

By: E&P Editorial:This editorial appeared in the Jan. 6 issue of E&P.

Updated at 1:05 p.m. EST

The Jesse Ventura Show closed in Minnesota Monday, when Republican Tim Pawlenty was sworn in to replace the former professional wrestler who in 1998 won an improbable election as governor on the Reform Party ticket.

Because Ventura was always more vaudevillian than visionary, his four years in office probably should not be assessed in the usual political way. In any case, Minnesota newspapers have already done an exhaustive job of weighing his slim achievements against the many opportunities wasted by this rare third-party governor who entered office with a $3.3-billion surplus and the genuine affection of more than three-quarters of Minnesotans.

Instead, Ventura's term is better judged like a once-popular sitcom whose audience -- and star -- have wandered off to more novel amusements. So when, as they say in TV, did the Ventura show Jump The Shark? For many Minnesotans, it was probably the winter of 2001, when he signed on as a TV announcer for wrestling promoter Vince McMahon's ludicrous XFL football league. After so much previous moonlighting, it was obvious that Jesse's entertainment career meant more to him than governing Minnesota.

But we think Ventura went wrong far earlier, when he picked his first major fight with the press by bleating that the University of Minnesota's basketball team had been hurt in the NCAA tournament by the Saint Paul Pioneer Press' thoroughly documented expos? of academic cheating by players. The governor who only months before had thundered in his inaugural speech that, like it or not, he would always be honest with Minnesotans let himself become a cheerleader for dishonesty.

Ventura never really had the talent to demagogue the media the way pros such as Spiro Agnew and George Wallace could in the 1960s or Hugo Ch?vez can today. More pouter than populist, tough-guy Jesse Ventura threw hissy fits instead of roundhouse rights. When he tried to out-macho the Minneapolis Star Tribune's outdoor writer by contrasting himself as a "hunter of man" to cowardly hunters of "Bambi," he managed only to alienate the 425,000 people who take out Minnesota deer-hunting licenses in a typical year.

Ventura's press-bashing was so clumsy that he couldn't even make the news media look arrogant. When he briefly changed Statehouse press credentials to read "Official Jackal," or insisted that the Pioneer Press could not use his "trademarked" name and image in a political comic strip, or refused, for "security" reasons, after 9/11, to let reporters know his daily schedule -- it was Jesse "The Body" Ventura who ended up looking like the stuffed shirt.

Like a playground bully, Jesse Ventura always ran away when the press defended itself, yet never stopped treating reporters as if they were the enemy. Journalists, in turn, did something far more damaging to the Grappling Governor: They held him accountable for his words and deeds -- as if he were a serious public official.