TERRY: I don’t think Jesse needs to do anything more in politics. I think running for president would destroy him. I don’t think that they’ll kill him, but that they’ll do the best job of character assassination they possibly can. And they’re really good at it. I just hate to see him go through it.
Whoever does win in 2008 is going to have the monumental task of spending literally his or her first four years (and maybe only four years) attempting to clean up Bush’s mess. That’s the part that shies me away from running. Our next president will inherit an unfinished war in Afghanistan and a complete quagmire in Iraq, not to mention what might happen in Iran in Bush’s last year. The economy is more polarized than ever, the billionaires having gotten richer, and at the same time, more than 40 million Americans are trying to get by without health insurance. Call me selfish, but I would prefer to come into office with more of a clean slate and be able to try to accomplish things I’d like to do.
Another reason I don’t think I could be president today is that I’m incapable of lying. Every president in my adult lifetime, except maybe Jimmy Carter, has lied to the American people. Think about LBJ and Vietnam. Nixon and Watergate. Reagan and Iran-Contra. George H.w. Bush and “No New Taxes.” Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Is that what it means now to be president of the United States—to be able to keep a straight face on TV and lie? Why have we become a country that doesn’t want to hear the truth? Think about baseball for a moment: the only ballplayer telling the truth about his use of steroids was José Canseco—and he’s the one who got destroyed for doing so. Jesse Ventura was a truth teller as governor of Minnesota, and there was a huge attempt to destroy me, too.
We’ve become what the corporations set out to turn us into—as though we’re lemmings plunging suicidally into the sea. (Should I have dedicated this book to “all the lemmings?” I thought about it). There is no job security anymore. I’m seeing my friends, at age fifty, losing their jobs, left and right. And it’s being done by corporate America. It’s a lot cheaper to hire a twenty-year-old than to keep someone who’s given you twenty-five years of loyal service. But loyalty is becoming a thing of the past in the business and work world, among both employers and employees. It’s survival of the economic fittest. Look at what’s been happening with the breaking of unions. It’s frightening. We’re in big trouble.
The definition of fascism, as Mussolini once expressed it, is a wedding between the corporation and religion. Today, we have corporate America joining forces with organized religion to control the country. I would say that we’re past the point of being afraid fascism might happen. I think it is happening. We’re beyond the warning point, just as with global warming. I still believe in humans’ ability to withstand and prevail, but we’re on the verge of dire and, perhaps, catastrophic consequences. And I see fascism as alive and well in the United States of America.
Many of the American people have it very cushy, and I don’t exclude myself as someone who fits into that category. Because of that cushiness, no one seems to want to rock the boat at all. When will people wake up to the fact that apathy breeds bad government? Right now, I think we’re living with some of the worst government imaginable. Why? Because of us. Because we’re not diligent, we’re not holding them accountable, everybody’s waiting for their neighbor to say something. Imagine if we’d had that attitude back when we were under England’s rule. We still would be a colony if people hadn’t stepped forward and put themselves on the line. The sad part is, going into politics today, you have to be as mentally focused as if you’re going to war—and then be prepared for every underhanded tactic you can imagine.
So I keep questioning myself. Is it worth it to put my family and me out there, to take on a force that most of the American people are willing to go along with? Somehow we’ve lost the concept of “We the People.” The government is supposed to be us, and it’s not us anymore. It’s been hijacked.
Just when is somebody going to do something?
Or can they?
CHAPTER 16
A Character in Search of an Ending
“A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt.... If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.”
—Thomas Jefferson, 1798, after the passage of the Sedition Act
Toward evening, I often take Dexter for a walk to the top of a sand dune about a mile from my house. I’ve got a spot up there where I can look due north and see not a trace of anything human. If I look to the left, I see desert and mountains. Off to the right is where the ocean meets the beach. What I most enjoy is tipping my head just enough to hear the ocean out of one ear, and the desert out of the other.
I sometimes stay there with my dog until it’s just about dark. I don’t think much about what’s happening in America when I’m at the dune. No, my focus is more on the simple pleasures, and the unique people I’ve gotten a chance to know in the Baja. I’ve got one friend, named Fernando, who speaks decent English because he’s spent the better part of his adult life hanging out with American surfers. He’s a free spirit; someone who goes without everything that we in the States take for granted. His house is built with reeds and sticks and whatever else he could find, with a dirt floor. He gathers bottles from a local restaurant, so he can use the glass in a staircase he’s building. I love watching Fernando survive with materials most Americans would throw out.
I also love how he met his wife, Crystal. She had just come over from Mexico City to a job in Todos Santos that didn’t work out. She’d started hitchhiking on her way out of town, when Fernando picked her up. When he told me the story I laughed and said, “See? It was destiny, Fernando. You and Crystal were led to each other.” In a way, Fernando reminds me of my father-in-law, because he’s now taken an existing family and is becoming a father to the children. I always admire people who can do that. Fernando seems to really be enjoying the change in his life. And, as long as he’s happy, that makes me happy.
An excerpt from Terry’s journal: I came to Baja in the winter. What was it that made me stay here? Why did I not follow my first instincts and run back to where I came from? Why did I fall in love after a horrendous drive to get here that made me scared, furious, and so tired I felt like I wanted to sleep for days when we arrived? What kept me from jumping out of the vehicle?
It was the vista that dazzled my eyes and touched something inside me that had not yet been reached. I had no idea there was anything left inside of me to be discovered. It was not the last thing I found.
Our home is wide and deep and full of air and sunshine with ocean views to our west and rough, pointy mountains to our east. In between are ranches that reminded me of small-town middle-American family farms owned by the fourth or fifth generation men, women, and children, land that is passed down.
I spent a week unpacking, exploring, meeting my neighbors, and trying to find a reason to leave and go back to my family, grown children, and friends, to my lovely home on the lake.
I am glad I was not successful.
I love the way the beach changes everyday. I love to search the shoreline for different forms of sea life that have lost their battle with the ocean and are tossed up on the sand. The weird pieces of other people’s property that end up here, like tiles, bottles, nets, and even pieces of cars! Garbage to most, interesting to ponder for some.
I love seeing the mother whales and their babies, breaching. I love to track the sea lions and dolphins with my telescope. I am especially thrilled with the fish boils, which are huge schools of sardines that form a giant ball to protect themselves from predator fish hunting them tirelessl
y from below while pelicans dive bomb them from above. All the while the sea that surrounds them boils and foams and travels up and down the shore until the sardines are just a small group and the predators and the pelicans are sated and spent.
I love the long winding dirt road behind our property that I walk down to the tremendous arroyo lined with rock walls ten stories high. There are cactus and agave and trees and plants of all kinds clinging to the sides of those walls and all manner of lizards, birds, rodents, and insects make their homes in them. As I walk the arroyo floor, I come upon little oases where boulders have tumbled down crevices made by rushing water to become small waterfalls and pools filled with even more plants and wildlife. Flowers attract thousands of butterflies that come here to escape the harsh snows of their homeland just like we do.
I have seen and touched and experienced so many things that I knew existed but never thought I would have a chance at trying. I wake up every day thinking, “What do I want to do today?” I go to sleep each night thinking, “How lucky I am to have this happen to me when I am still able physically and mentally to try it all.”
The orange, yellow, and purple dawns inspire me, and the pink and sapphire blue evenings calm me. All the while the sea is the continuous background music that ranges from heavy metal to Bach to Sinatra playing twenty-four hours a day.
I have made friends with the local ranch families and enjoy buying fresh eggs from them that carry the remnants of the mother’s body still on the shells and sometimes the remnants of the father’s in the yolks. I also buy the cheese from their milk cows that is rich, creamy, and tastes of desert sage, sea salt, the earth, and the cow. The families are close, and often the grandparents are still on the property living with them. Children, there are always children. A combination of cousins and friends. The families are strong and the love runs deep and the loyalty is forever. They have family fights and sometimes do not speak but, in the end, the ties that bind are made of metal and silk and will never be broken forever.
I have a feeling of peace here that is absent in my homeland. I am not fearful here as I was there. Here we pick up families or women with children and their luggage looking for a ride, or old men from their broken-down cars, or young men get pulled out of the ditch, all of which we find on the roads into town. They open the doors to our vehicles and we find new experiences through our discussions in broken English and Español as we take them along and drop them off.
Our remote location makes neighbors stop by to let you know the propane truck is in the area or that their generator is broken down and they need help. We share trips into town for supplies or to the airport. We watch out for each other.
It is a life I remember from my childhood, seldom felt as I became an adult.
I am dreaming while I am awake, imagining while I am walking and feeling my senses expand as I go about my business of living life to the fullest in a place that allows and encourages it.
I met Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., through a mutual friend. I knew him by reputation only, as one of the leading advocates for the environment and a dynamic speaker, the second oldest son of the late senator. He and his family were coming to Cabo San Lucas for a quick vacation. We shared a mutual passion—diving—and the waters off Cabo were said to be some of the best in Baja for it. It was only a ninety-minute drive from my house to where the Kennedys were staying, and we made a date to meet around lunchtime in a gated community called the Pedregal.
I parked outside a Moorish-style house, built right into the cliffs about sixty feet above the Pacific, a house that seemed to hang in the air with views of the ocean from all sides. When Robert came out to greet us, I looked at him for a long moment. “Yeah, I can sure see the resemblance,” I said. “We’re about the same age, and I grew up with your father and your uncle.” It was actually uncanny how much Robert looked like his father.
He called down to his wife, Mary, who was in the swimming pool with their four kids: “Honey, come up and meet the governor.” We sat down at a round dining table. The twelve-year-old and nine-year-old boys especially had a lot of questions for me about wrestling. “Did you ever wrestle André the Giant?” Robert asked. I had, and told them nobody had ever been able to beat André. This launched us into a discussion about how you can tell a giant—by the hands and feet—and also the fact they don’t usually live too long. André had died fairly young.
“Were you a real SEAL?” one of the boys asked. I told a few of my favorite tales from my frogman days, and pointed out to them that their grand-uncle JFK had started the Navy SEALs. Actually, Robert said, it was his father who was the impetus, because he loved all that kind of covert action stuff. Somehow I got inspired to show him and the boys the tattoos on my chest. Which prompted Robert to show one of his own, on the upper thigh. We all thought that was pretty damned funny.
“Okay,” he said as we munched away on some delicious fajitas that Mary had cooked up, “we’d better head down to the dive shop or we’ll be late.”
Along with the oldest boy, Conor, we left the Pedregal and headed for the Cabo marina. As we neared the parking lot, Robert turned to me and asked: “What were your numbers in Minnesota?” This was politics talk, and I knew exactly what he meant.
“My numbers? Oh, the power-brokers try to pretend I didn’t happen. To them, those four years were just a bad dream.” Robert cracked up laughing. “But my numbers were 73 [percent approval] when I came in, and 45 was the lowest they went.”
“Not bad,” Robert said, and grinned at me.
We were walking toward the dive shop when I raised the fact that we’d both had private visits with Fidel Castro. “I was with him for an hour,” I said.
“We were with him for four-and-a-half hours,” Robert said, “starting at one o’clock in the morning!”
“Oh, well, he met with me at noon,” I said. Looking back on it, there may have been a little friendly competition between us over our visits with Fidel.
The dive shop wanted to see my certification. I brought out my Navy Underwater Demolition Team card. “That will do,” the man checking us in said.
So they gave us our gear, and a female guide who spoke good English, and we boarded a boat bound for Pelican Rock. We put on our tanks and went overboard. The plan was that we’d be down for about forty-five minutes, at depths as much as eighty feet. It was incredible down there. The tropical fish were abundant and beautiful. At one point, a moray eel came out from under a rock and momentarily came right toward me. That was exciting.
I was first to resurface. When Robert and Conor soon joined me on board, Robert said: “That was kind of existential.” He was referring to our having gone right to the edge of the continental shelf and watched sand pour over the abyss like a waterfall.
As we all returned to shore again, I was telling a few tales about my teaching fellowship at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
“What did you teach?” Conor asked.
“Third-party politics,” I told him, and added: “Something your dad doesn’t know anything about!” Robert cracked up laughing again.
Driving back to the house, he started asking me some more personal questions. About where I lived in Minnesota and, when I said it was on a lake, whether I fished. I told him the story of Terry catching the bigger muskie. “What’s your wife like?” Robert asked. I explained that Terry’s health was the biggest reason that I hadn’t run for governor again, but that her condition had improved immensely since we came to Baja.
Once back inside at the round table, Robert wanted to know more about my visit with Castro. So I related the whole story, including my being tailed by the CIA in Havana. Robert asked Finn, the nine-year-old, if he remembered seeing Predator. “The governor was the guy with the Gatling gun,” he told the boy, and Finn grinned and said, “Oh yeah.”
This got us talking about Arnold and his wife, Maria Shriver. Robert, in fact, had been instrumental in forging Schwarzenegger’s forward-thinking environmental policies since he became C
alifornia’s governor. Mary recalled how Arnold and Maria had first met at Ethel Kennedy’s tennis tournament in New York. They all knew something was up when Maria was spotted dashing for a seat next to him on the private bus. I recalled coaching Arnold on how to say his “I do’s” on the Predator set, out there in the jungle around Puerto Vallarta.
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.
Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! Page 29