Jesse Ventura and Political Activism

In a recent television interview, former WWE wrestler and Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura said that he could not support Linda McMahon's run for the US Senate out of Connecticut. It was nothing personal, he explained: he simply couldn't vote for a party candidate anymore. Perhaps if she were an independent, he might.

Mr. Ventura further commented that he is against even a third party in the United States. "We already have a two headed monster; why have a three headed one?", he opined. The gist of it all was that it makes no difference who is in power, or for whom we vote.

Yet in fact it does make a difference, Jesse. Just the other day we pointed out in these pages how the Clinton Administration had to pare down its budget plans after the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994. And there's more where that came from.

We have the great success of the 1980's when Ronald Reagan and the GOP led us on an incredible run of prosperity after the Carter pessimism and malaise of the 1970s. We have seen bans on embryonic stem cell research when Republicans held the White House. We have seen that Americans believe in themselves when there are more right wingers and right leaning politicians in office than when those of the left hold sway.

The differences are sometimes negative as well. Everyone can see how President Barack Obama and his Democratic minions ramrodded the recent health care reforms through Congress despite the obvious fact that the majority of Americans did not want them, using an obscure parliamentary tactic in order to achieve the goal. The term 'borked' is in our political lexicon solely because the Democrats smugly and arrogantly weren't about to give then President Ronald Reagan the time of day once they retook the Senate. We saw Democratic hypocrisy when the party pushed and prodded President George H. W. Bush for new taxes which they claimed were absolutely necessary, only to have the man mocked as a hypocrite himself when he tried to be nonpartisan and conceded to their will. Indeed, much ill has come when the GOP wanted to appear magnanimous and bipartisan, only to be lambasted by the opposition when they gave in to it.

This isn't to say that the parties are perfect. When the GOP lost its moorings the public responded with a series of electoral rebuffs. Hopefully, a lesson has been learned in the last couple of years, and that there will soon be a return to fiscal and moral sanity in Washington. But the bottom line is that lumping the parties together is in fact unfair, and intellectually dishonest. The differences are there, and they matter. To ignore them, or worse, to not vote or fail to espouse better public policy on the grounds that it makes no difference, is shallow intellectualism. It mocks the very ideals of our nation, and is, at its heart, just plain lazy citizenship.