Ready To Rumble

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Jesse Ventura wakes up on another below-zero morning in St. Paul, Minn., and looks around the room.

Yep. He's still in the nine-bedroom, seven-fireplace Tudor mansion. He must still be the Governor.

What a week!

The man who used to drop people on their head for a living, and is now doing the same to the two-party system, puts on a pair of lime green Lycra shorts, a white T shirt and some New Balance sneakers. He still doesn't know what's behind every door of the sprawling three-story Governor's manse with the four-room kitchen, but he knows the gym is somewhere upstairs.

His wife Terry, who was much more comfortable on their horse farm, is on a treadmill when Jesse gets there. She tells him how to kick-start the other one, whose dashboard rivals the space shuttle's.

While working up a 20-minute sweat, Jesse ("the Body") trashes the press, talks budget strategy, shares foreign-policy views and taunts a former pro-wrestling nemesis named Jerry ("the King") Lawler.

"I hope we're not over [teenage son] Ty's room," the First Lady of Minnesota says as the floor quakes under her 6-ft. 4-in., 260-lb. husband.

"It's all right," the sweaty Governor responds in a voice as muscular as his 18-in. biceps. "He's woke us up enough times."

Nearly 2 1/4 centuries into the American experiment, it's not always clear which way the Republic is headed. But in a year that began with career politicians wrestling in Washington and a career wrestler politicking in Minnesota, we may finally have found True North.

On Monday the Reform Party Governor and former wrestling bad boy in a feather boa asked Minnesotans to continue setting a national example for civic participation (roughly 60% of registered voters cast their ballots in November, in contrast to 36% nationally) and ended his inaugural speech with the Navy SEAL rally cry "Hoo-yah!"

On Tuesday he met face-to-face with the house speaker, a Republican, to partner a proposed $1 billion tax rebate.

On Wednesday he appointed three department heads--one Democrat, one Republican, one Reform Party member.

Ventura, who pulled off a stunning upset in November by tapping into public disgust over militant partisanship, is all over the place. He's a third-party Governor who has Republicans running one chamber and Democrats the other, so nobody knows how it will all work.

And so far nobody cares.

Shaved heads have become a fashion trend. Nearly 14,000 seats for the Jan. 16 inaugural party at the sports arena were gone in little more than a day. Jesse action figures are on order. Business has picked up at Navy recruiting centers. Thirteen hundred business leaders gave Ventura a standing ovation. A college crowd yelled for a band to get off the stage so the Governor could come out. The World Wrestling Federation rushed out a commemorative video titled The Mouth, the Myth, the Legend. And a capitol lobbyist said Ventura doesn't have the foggiest notion how government works.