MISSOURI WATCH: WATCH OUT: MISSOURI COULD BE NEXT TO ELECT VENTURA-TYPE CHIEF

According to published reports from Lake Wobegon and other venues, Minnesotans are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with their last November choice for governor, Jesse Ventura. It's not that the former professional wrestler has committed any horrendous boo-boo that has disgraced the entire state, but because there is growing evidence that he lacks both the knowledge and the vision to trade holds with the serious problems facing Minnesota.

The Land of 10,000 Lakes is facing the same kind of challenges as the Land Where the Rivers Meet and other increasingly important state governments in the nation.

I recently had a brief interview with Ventura at the National Governors' Association meeting, and found him to be, at least on the surface, not unlike many of the other chief executives attending the conference, save that he had an air of celebrity about him that was missing in the other attending buttoned-down governors.

Let's face it, Ventura is famous because he once made his living deceiving the audience about the pain he was suffering from a half nelson applied by some kind of person more closely resembling a gorilla than a human. He was, in a manner of speaking, a product of show business, but not one resembling the more prestigious kind that produced Ronald Reagan but the seedier version that spawned Gorilla Monsoon.

The question I asked the governor of Minnesota had to do with how he viewed the major problems of his state, which sparked a diatribe against members of his state's Legislature and then produced several hardly logical reasons for disbanding that branch of government and installing a single legislative body. As every freshman political science major knows, this is called a unicameral legislature, one body replacing the traditional House and Senate chambers. This so-called reform was adopted in 1934 by the state of Nebraska, thanks to the efforts of the progressive George Norris movement. No state has seriously considered adopting the plan. Until now.

Governor Ventura is supporting the single-chamber plan not because he believes it will better serve the interst of his constituents, which it won't, but because he has already encountered predictable difficulty in getting some of his proposals approved in St. Paul. This is perhaps the worst reason in the world to start monkeying around with the legislative process, whatever its faults -- and there are several -- but Ventura appears unable to transcend his own personal advocacy piques. He was elected, after all, not because he was able to discuss important policy issues during the campaign but because a vast majority in the state used him to punish the hackneyed candidates offered by the Republicans and Democrats.

Ventura's opposition last fall, while including the son of one of the state's favorite political figures, the late Hubert Humphrey, virtually ignored Minnesota's major problems and challenges, choosing instead to wage the kind of contest that matched Tweedledee against Tweedledum. Voters had difficulty distinguishing the remarks of one from the remarks of the other, with neither offering any solutions, or even any ideas for solutions, to the challenges facing the state. Instead, each concentrated on the alleged faults of his opponent, and at one low point in the campaign they even began criticizing each other's wives. Midway through the campaign, it was obvious the electorate had turned off the campaign speeches, debates and the candidates themselves. Enter, Jesse.

It is no accident that the concerns of a few million Minnesotans are also the concerns of millions of Missourians and many more millions of voters in countless states around the country. At the precise moment that states stand at a moment in history when they can both enhance the effectiveness of self-rule and reverse the public's flagging disinterest and distrust in constitutional democracy, most of us are willing to grasp at any straw that will relieve our distress from the dyspepsia of visionless candidates, disgusting campaign practices and the great gulfs of special interest contributions.

As I have said on too many occasions in the past, citizens trust their governments but distrust those who run them.

Missouri entered briefly, but not complete, into the Ventura phase with 1976's surprise election of Joe Teasdale, who was elected for all the wrong reasons, and then resumed our balance by voting him out of office after one term. Given the nature and temperament of today's voter in Missouri, we can repeat the same dalliance, if not next year than in the election of 2004.

It is impossible to calculate the full and complete consequences of electing the wrong state officials, for they go far beyond public recognition, affecting the affairs of many for years even decades, later. Even as some of the errors of the Teasdale age are still present in Missouri, there will be similar consequences in Minnesota, for as Jefferson City has convincingly proved, there is great reluctance on the part of many elected officials to delve very deeply into the unresolved dilemmas that block effective government.

Sadly, it is John Q. Public -- that's all of us -- who pays the ultimate price for this political neglect. Solutions delayed for political reasons are major cause of public lethargy, at times boiling to public hostility, and the cost is borne not by the perpetrators but by the governed.

Make no mistake, Missouri could elect another Jesse Ventura, with or without pink tights, and the cost will be so horrendous that even the least progressive plans for our state's future will prove impossible to achieve. This is a price none of us should be willing to pay.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.