Let's talk about tomorrow. It's just you and me talking here, and 3.8 million readers.
Yeah.
Are you going to run for reelection next year, or the Senate, or a beach in Hawaii?
I don't know. Never would it be the Senate, because I don't think I could take being in the legislative part of government. I've been in the executive both as mayor and now as governor. I think the transition would be too difficult for me to go to the legislative end. I'd have to be in the executive end, so if you substitute Senate for president, that would be the proper change. Now, am I telling you I'm running for president? No. But if I went for federal office, that would be the one. If I went for it. Do I have a desire for it? No.
Am I going to seek reelection? I'll decide that after the legislative session. No. 1, I think campaigns are far too long, and because they're so long they're too costly. No. 2, you take an oath that you'll be here for four years, which includes four legislative sessions. If I do anything to announce my candidacy at this point, then the focus for the legislative session, it will already -- by the media -- turn to November. And I don't want that to happen. So at least until the completion of my last legislative session, we've got huge challenges. This'll be the toughest session of the four because of the deficits. So I want to be focused on that and not focused on running at all.
Have you had a chance to look at the Osama bin Laden tapes today?
I've heard bits and pieces of them.
Any impressions?
Just that he very clearly seemed to know about the whole attack and orchestrate it. I don't think there's any doubt when you hear that tape that he fully knew about the attack and took part in it.
Who's more evil, him or Victor Newman [the villain from Ventura's favorite soap opera, "The Young and the Restless"]?
Oh, he is.
That's pretty evil, then, eh?
Oh, Victor's not that evil. Victor's turning into a softy. Damn writers. He's best as a villain.
What should the XFL have done differently?
They should have got the antitrust status that baseball has. [Laughs]
That would have helped.
I was asked that by one of the congressmen. They said, "Governor, would the XFL be here today if it had the same antitrust status as baseball?" And I paused a moment and said, yes, there'd be no other competition. Certainly it would still be here today. He was making a great point, that why is this particular sport being given this special privilege when others didn't have it.
No, the XFL was, you know, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I thought it was great football. I enjoyed it. I thought the media was unduly harsh on it because of the fact that they don't like Vince McMahon and they're in the back pocket of the NFL. But that's neither here nor there, it was a venture that was tried. I was happy to be a part of it. It's too bad that league folded because it would have been a great feeder system for the NFL.
Give me a quick prediction of how the Twins thing is going to play out.
Oh, they'll be here next year. My prediction is that there's going to be a baseball lockout. I don't think there'll be a season. The impression I got in Washington was that these two groups, the players and management, have some huge obstacles between them -- huge -- and both of them are going to have to make huge compromises, and I just don't see both sides making those compromises.
You sat next to Bud Selig. Is he the hateful weasel that he comes across as being?
No. He was very cordial to me and we were very nice to each other and I respect him in his position. But the only thing I kind of don't like is that if they're asking me to come in and fix baseball, which everybody seems to be doing, well then I'd like his salary and his title. You know, I'd like to be the commissioner of baseball, and pay me what he's getting paid to do it if you're asking me to do that job for them.
We seem to be a society today that our main focus is based on our entertainment, which I should jump for joy over because I come from the entertainment industry, and it's nice to have a society like that. But when government's out there worried about baseball when you're fighting a war.
I'll give you an example. I did a 25-minute speech on the state's security on public television, telling everybody in the state what we were doing, how we prepared, this, that and everything about the war. When I finished that and walked out to leave on the elevator, Esme Murphy, one of the top CBS reporters here in the Twin Cities, came up to me and said, "Governor." Here was her question: "How do you respond to some people who say you're spending too much time on state security and not enough time on Major League Baseball and the Twins?"
Now you laugh over that, but think about it a moment. Pretty pathetic.
About the writer
King Kaufman is a senior writer for Salon.
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