Image courtesy CBSNews.com
You gotta love Jesse Ventura. The former governor of Minnesota, former wrestler, and sort-of former (and possibly future) U.S. expatriate is now either threatening to change his citizenship to Mexico — or run for President of the United States.
Ventura, like so many of us who fly, is fully enraged at the practices of the TSA, the Transportation Security Agency. The TSA exists for an important reason: to keep the traveling public safe from terrorist attack.
The problem, of course, is that meeting that mission is hard. Almost impossibly hard. Unfortunately, when faced with a hard-to-solve problem, American government officials can lean either of two ways: solve it, or get all bureaucratic and stupid.
Unfortunately, as we’ve sadly seen over and over again, the TSA hasn’t exactly distinguished itself as the bastion of American safety and security we’d like it to be. Instead, we’ve had to endure walking shoeless and beltless to our flights, had to endure pat downs, and — in a series of almost Monty Pythonesque episodes — had to watch the TSA practice the art of the reach-down in the most absurd way.
Parachuting into the middle of this chaos is former Navy SEAL, Jesse “The Body” Ventura, who has apparently been the victim of too many TSA pat-downs and ain’t havin’ no more of it, no sir.
Ventura recently filed a lawsuit against the TSA, which was thrown out last week due to a truly bizarre trap-door in the law. Apparently, the way Congress wrote the law, you can’t sue the TSA in federal court. Instead, all challenges must be brought directly to the Circuit Courts of Appeals.
I’m not a federal litigation expert, but this restriction apparently makes it way harder to apply normal legal checks and balances to the TSA.
The problem is that Ventura has a titanium implant in his hip, which sets off the security scanners. Whenever he flies commercial, he’s been subject to invasive pat-downs, which also seem to drift towards his fiddly bits. To say Ventura was peeved would be an extreme understatement.
But now, after taking his argument to the courts, he’s been smacked down by the weird legislation that prevents him from taking his case to a jury.
In anger, Ventura declared he’s changing his citizenship to Mexico — or running for President. He believes that the only way he’d get his day in court is to become President and, well, change the court.
So, the question is this: does Ventura stand even a cold chance in hell of making it to the Presidency?
To evaluate this question, we need to break it down into component pieces: (1) Can he appeal to enough Americans to get on the map? (2) Can he raise enough money to be a credible contender against the hundreds of millions of dollars that’ll be spent by his competitors? (3) Is there any way that an independent would ever win the White House? (4) Can he build the “machine” necessary for a national campaign? And (5) can he control his mouth and temper so he doesn’t shoot himself in his own foot?
Let’s look at each of these in turn.
