Gov. Ventura: Because it’s very clear that the American public wants more candidates and they’re being shut out. When you look at voting, with under 50 percent nationally, the trend is not going up, it’s going down. It’s kind of embarrassing that less than half of us even vote, and yet my Lieutenant-Governor just returned from Croatia, and they had a 94.7 percent voter turnout. The first question I asked her was: How many parties did they have and how many candidates were involved in the election? She said six. If you look at Israel, over 90 percent voter turnout. Why? Five to six parties. And it’s exactly what you’re seeing here, in my opinion, when you offer two parties and two choices that only attract roughly 40 percent of the people, because polls in Minnesota indicate that over 60 percent of Minnesotans don’t strongly identify with being a Democrat or Republican.

I don’t know. I think that there would be more of a variety of opinions on each issue, rather than one opinion from two candidates. I mean, it’s like when I was on Larry King a week ago, and I was on with all the inside-the-Beltway “talking heads” as I call them, and they were all expounding about how great our two-party system has served us and how great it’s been through the years, and it got to me and I looked at ’em all and said, ‘Yeah, gives us one more choice than Russia.’

I think so. People are sitting back and going, ‘You know, I’m undecided.’ I sit in the same boat. I mean, I look at what I have out there and I go, ‘I have no idea who I’m gonna walk in and vote for. No idea.’ And it’s my view that you’ve got an entire centrist movement out there that is not represented, which, to me, is the majority of Americans. I’m fiscally conservative and socially liberal, which puts me in neither camp. And when you look at the third-party candidates, Nader’s farther left than the Vice President and Buchanan’s farther right than Gov. Bush. So you’re narrowing their scope down to this narrow little group of people farther left and farther right extreme.

I watched them, off and on, and I would say that they went about according to the way I felt they would. They’re both trying to make big efforts not to seem stiff and coached, and spun.

It’s obvious to me, how hard they’re working at trying to look uncoached.

I don’t know. I don’t really give points for style. Having met them both, I know them both, and I know that the Vice President is trying to debate like I do.

Yeah.

No, no, no.

Of speaking natural. When I debated, my entire election, I never had a note and never had a prepared speech, ever. I do way more now. You know, I have a staff now, so they write me things…. But–well, it’s like when the Vice President visited me up in Minnesota and spent the day with me, we went to a school in the summer at Hopkins, and the kids were getting off the bus and we were out there to greet them, and there was one kid with a real wild spike hair-do in multicolors and all that, and he and I gravitated to each other a little bit, and I started talking to him. When I was done, the Vice President came over to me and he said, ‘How do you do it? How do you get a kid like that, who just seems to open up to you and knows that you’re okay?’ I said probably because I used to have my hair like him. Actually, that’s what’s started the conversation, because I wanted to know what he was using in his hair [and] warn him that things that you put into your hair can result in great hair loss.

Well, I don’t know. You know, you’re asking me to think for them. That’s difficult for me to do.

I thought they both were very predictable, and they seemed to snipe at each other a little bit. I thought maybe a little more decorum could be better. You know, let the person finish their statement and then respond. They seemed to interrupt each other quite a bit.

Yeah. I may be wrong but I see this as one of the lowest voter turnouts. People are just going to shrug it off and go, ‘What difference does it make? I’m going to get the same, same; nothing’s going to change.’ I found it interesting that the Governor’s really pushing hard that things must change, and I sat back and thought, we’ve just gone through the greatest eight to ten years of prosperity in our nation. Why would we be necessarily looking for drastic changes? Can he assure us it’s going to change for the better, when it’s been so good? So that part of it confuses me a little. I guess he has to, though, because he doesn’t dare walk out there and say, well, the status quo’s been terrific. So I guess he’s left with no alternative but to try to say that we need some drastic changes. But why?

I have no idea.

No. I’m looking for third party.

No. I’m not stuck with ’em.

Oh, absolutely. Chances are I will because I’m a believer in the third party movement.

No.

It leaves Hagelin. In fact we sponsored a debate in Minnesota that disturbed me, because my Independence Party sponsored the first presidential debate, and I was very disappointed that Nader and Buchanan chose not to attend. Here they are, crying out they want to debate; it was covered live on C-SPAN, which, granted, that’s not the networks, but it still covers the country, and you’d think that they would want to get out as much as they possibly could. What disappointed me about Nader was, I met with him and had a press conference with him, and that was his very message: that Americans need to sponsor their own debates, so that they can get a fast field of candidates. We do it in Minnesota, and he chooses not to come. And it was an interesting debate. They brought up subjects that I think need to be brought up, and these other guys aren’t going to touch them with a 10-foot pole.

Legalization and decriminalization of drugs, and the whole war on drugs. I don’t recall all the subjects, but naturally, campaign finance reform was very large in this.

It’s very difficult because we’ve given up so much of our rights to the federal government. Just as in California when they voted to make medicinal marijuana, what happened? The Feds came in and said we’ll throw in jail any doctor that prescribes it. I find that extremely disturbing. See, I’m a great believer that we’ve given up far too many of our rights to the Federal Government and we need to take them back….It costs me $30,000 a year to incarcerate someone, and I think that that is utterly ridiculous, to incarcerate someone for a crime against themselves, because, in essence, that’s all it is. Like I always say, in Minnesota, you can’t legislate stupidity.

No. I’m not. First of all, I think legalization’s the wrong term. I would say decriminalization. To me, it’s a failure. My mother told me it was, and she was a very bright woman who lived through prohibition of alcohol. She said what you have today is identically the same. You’re creating criminals. You’re creating vast wealthy empires out there. Let me give you the easiest example I can. I sit on the Pardon Board with the Chief Justice of our Supreme Court and with our Attorney General. Three months ago, or four months ago, we had a first-degree murderer who put in to be pardoned. We denied it because he wasn’t even up for parole yet. Anyway, it turns out this guy’s been busted 21 times for marijuana in prison. Now how on earth are we expected, in a supposed free society out here on the street corner, to stop drug usage, when we can’t even prevent this man, who is locked up, 24 hours a day for first-degree murder, from using? How are we, as a supposed free society, supposed to fight it?

Well, depending on which side of the river you’re standing on, on one side, if you decriminalize, it would mean more regulation because there is no regulation now. But then, if you stand on the other side of the river, you look at it and say, well, that would mean decriminalization. Which would be better? I’ll ask you. What’s better? Regulation or criminalization? I think I’d prefer regulation rather than criminalization.

Uh-huh. And I’m not saying when you regulate something you put it in a 7-11 store. That’s not what I’m talking about. Maybe what I’m saying is that let’s let each state make the decision.

No. I can’t do it. I’m just the governor. The legislature would have to do it.

I don’t think I could because I’m the most vetoed, overridden governor in history, in Minnesota. But I wear that badge with pride.

No. It’s too late. He would fall under the same thing that happened to Perot, the first time he ran. He’s out of the race. You can’t get out of the race and then come back into it.

I think, had he stayed in it from the start, and had he truly understood, as I told him, that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in you know where that he was going to get the Republican nomination, I think had he broke away from the Republican Part at that point in time and went completely independent, yeah, I believe that Senator McCain would be running neck and neck with both of them, right now. You would have a three-way race, that would go right down to the wire, that, ultimately, Senator McCain could win, the identical way I won, because he was doing the exact same thing I did, nationally, that I did in Minnesota.

No.

I certainly would have entertained him and given it its due consideration.

Sure, he is. Anyone that keeps bringing it forward is a good messenger, and someone with Senator McCain’s stature [is] always a good messenger for it.

I had the conversation with him while he was still in the race, when he came up and he sat in my office. I looked right at him and said, “You can win.”

He had a twinkle in his eye, and he smiled at me, and, for whatever reason, he wouldn’t cut the final umbilical cord. He couldn’t break away from being a Republican, and he told me that straight up and point-blank. He said ‘I’m a Republican and I will always stay a Republican,’ and I take him for a man of his word.

Uh-huh.

What’s concerning to them right now are school loans. How do I get through college? Things of that nature. And the job market and what’s going to be available for me out there. What direction I need to go. Things like that. They’re certainly not into are they going to get Social Security because most of them probably don’t know if they’ll live that long…