Don't Start the Revolution Without Me!,
by Jesse Ventura & Dick Russell


(Click for Amazon book review)

BOOK REVIEW by OnTheIssues.org:

We love this book. If every politician wrote a book like this, and if the mainstream press actually read them, then there would be no need for OnTheIssues.org to exist. But in fact it is rare to see a politician who openly lays out his policy stances and the reasoning behind them -- and we greatly admire Ventura for doing so. It permanently qualifies Ventura as a "straight talker" -- even more so than his previous books, Ain't Got Time To Bleed and Do I Stand Alone.

Jesse Ventura was elected Governor of Minnesota as an independent running against a strong Republican and a strong Democrat. The mainstream press ridiculed his campaign as a joke perpetrated on the people by a former professional wrestler and movie actor. But the public knew better than the pundits, and elected Ventura, who served competently, if imperfectly, for a single term.

The big question today is, "Will Ventura run for Senate?" We write this review on July 11, a week before the filing deadline for the Minnesota Senate race, and we read this book as an excellent campaign book. Ventura's many opponents in the punditocracy and the mainstream parties criticize Ventura for using this book, and the resulting nationwide book tour, as free publicity for a son-to-be-announced campaign. We believe those opponents make their comments from the framework of incumbency protection -- that they support the status quo that Ventura threatens. OnTheIssues feels that independent candidacies are so limited by campaign rules -- everything from ballot access to inclusion in the debates and press coverage -- that anything is ok to get publicity for independent candidates.

The Minnesota Senate race includes a Republican incumbent -- the same Norm Coleman whom Ventura beat in the governor's race -- and a strong Democrat -- the nationally-known Al Franken. Sen. Coleman is considered one of the most vulnerable incumbents because he got elected only because his opponent, Sen. Paul Wellstone tragically died in a plane crash just before the 2002 election.

We at OnTheIssues support independent candidates; we feel that a serious three-way race is better for the voters and better for the country than the standard two-way race. One of our major missions is to treat third-party candidates equal to major-party candidates, since the mainstream media covers third-party candidates so poorly. Win or lose, we hope that Ventura's candidacy helps the public and the press accept that independents CAN run seriously and should be included in the political process.

This book encapsulates Ventura's views on all the major issues of the day. If Franken or Coleman wrote similar books, we would be similarly effusive about their candidacies and their books. But they don't write such books, like almost all major-party candidates don't. The voting public should ask the major-party why they DON'T lay out their issue stances, rather than letting the mainstream media harass third-party candidates with meaningless questions about why they are running. Ventura is running to change America, like every candidate we've ever covered. We hope he can, and we hope he sparks a change in the view of independent candidacies.

-- Jesse Gordon, jesse@OnTheIssues.org, July 2008

OR click on an issue category below for a subset.

Click for quotations from other sources by: