When I heard Ventura was running, I rolled my eyes. Yes, he had been part-time mayor of a Twin Cities suburb, much as Clint Eastwood had been mayor of Carmel, Calif., on a whim. And he had his own talk show for a couple of years. His husky rasp was a familiar sound on the airwaves. His politics were populist libertarian.
Governors come and governors go.
Ventura may be a one-termer, and if he is bad, he will likely be hilariously bad. Or he could become a fine, different model for a modern governor. It doesn't matter. Voters looked beyond the political cliches and saw that, good governor or bad, governors don't mean a hill of beans in a state's overall fortunes. But that a putrid political system, in which money buys elections, big media call the shots, mudslinging wins, and two fat, dull, blue-suited parties divide all the spoils between them, discourages the citizenry until the vote means next to nothing.