Texas Exodus

There are days when Morrill Hall, the main administrative building at the U of M, seems like a beehive of activity, and other days, usually in the summer, when it seems like a morgue. On the day President Mark Yudof announced he would be leaving for Texas, it was both: A solemn mood hung over a buzz of endless speculation. Was he really leaving for personal reasons? Who would succeed him? How would a number of top vacancies in the administration be filled?

The next day the newspapers trumped TV coverage in capturing the moment, with close-ups of Yudof, his eyelids red and his face wan, delivering the results of what had clearly been a difficult decision. At a private meeting with staff earlier in the day, he had been choked up to the point where he could barely speak, but by the time of his press conference he was somber and philosophical. In his departure, there was no underlying anger for the governor or the Legislature. Even when someone reminded him of the barrels of ink outraged sports writers had spilled on him, he only seemed bemused. A consensus among the drones at Morrill Hall formed quickly. Yudof was being straight with people. In going to Texas, he was truly going home. For the delicate ego of this state, which has elevated the notion of its high quality of life to a near-religious concept, there was at least some solace in the fact that Yudof’s decision was a personal one.

But other uncomfortable questions remained: Didn’t professionals who come to Minnesota end up wanting to stay here because of the people, the arts, the commitment to education—remember Wendell with the walleye on the cover of Time? And now the Mary Tyler Moore statue? Why did it have to be Texas, a state whose braggadocio is the inverse of Minnesota’s quiet smugness; Texas, which took away the state’s professional hockey team a few years ago and may one day take its football team? Moving to New York, Washington, D.C., or California might have been understandable. Iowa or Wisconsin unthinkable. Texas was somewhere in between, but still a hard decision to swallow.

People who worked with him marveled at his ability to charm audiences inside and outside the University. Some of his persuasiveness arose from genuine charisma, or some kind of leadership juju we don’t pretend to understand. But we attribute much of Minnesotans’ goodwill toward Yudof to the fact that the difference between the public and the private man was never really that great. You could see that in his refusal to rehearse for his speeches, which sometimes drove his staff crazy. The logic was never articulated, but we suspect he balked at rehearsing when he was just going to be himself in front of an audience. Why practice being himself?

For five years Yudof was genuinely committed to the enterprise of the University, to its students, to its role as an intellectual center for the state, and to its improvement. Minnesotans could sense that. There was a level of personal accountability for the large and unwieldy institution he had taken on that really connected with people. In ways his recent predecessors had not, he became the face of the University of Minnesota. But university presidents can’t serve that role indefinitely. The job is too taxing and the enemies gradually accumulate over the years. Although we wish Mark Yudof had given Minnesota another two or three years, only the Gopher lives forever.

…and clean up the beer bottles and ashtrays?

We don’t feel inclined to dog pile on our departing governor, although we’re wondering whether he’ll still make his Huck Finn run down the Mighty Miss on one of his beloved jet skis. Frankly, we’re not surprised that he’s pulling the plug on a second term. The word from inside the compound was that first lady Terry was less than thrilled with the job. We’ve never been convinced that Jesse wanted the job either—surely not if it meant having to hobnob on the blower all day with pasty pipsqueaks from backwaters like Kasota, Backus, and East Grand Forks. Jesse struggled with public speaking, too, especially when it involved having to engage others in serious dialogue about the issues. It was so much less complicated when it was just him and a microphone and the dense, excitable listenership of KSTP radio.

No, Jesse Ventura wanted the job for one reason: Jesse. He was, is, and shall remain a celebrity. And today he’s bigger than he’s ever been. You think he could have acted his way off the B-list to the top of the A-list in the past four years? You think a cameo in Predator X would have landed him on the cover of Time?

We have fond memories. Jesse was possibly the most surprised person on the planet when he became Minnesota’s 38th governor. We thought we saw his jeans riding a little lower when final election returns actually came in that night so long ago. For once, he was at a loss for words of any length. To be sure, Jesse Ventura was a refreshing half-nelson in the milquetoast realm of Minnesota politics. But we were distracted by his constant gripe—a celebrity’s gripe, textbook—that others would profit from his name and likeness, and he spent a lot of time trying to prevent that kind of dough from slipping through his own fingers.

The other complaint that started to trip so easily off Ventura’s tongue in recent months was also straight out of the celebrity operator’s manual—that his family was entitled to its privacy. But this is one of the great tradeoffs of fame, whether you’re leading a state government or guest-starring in a Schwarzenegger flick. The cost of celebrity is privacy, and it’s a full-time gig. If Ventura wanted to enjoy his millions in peace, perhaps he should have been a brain surgeon. Then again, he was accustomed to hunting man, not serving him. Anonymity would be the death of The Body.

The problem with celebrities, of course, is that they so rarely know when to bow out of the limelight, and never do it gracefully. They tend to hang around in smoky backrooms and crappy straight-to-video releases, comparing their miniscule Q-ratings against the great totem pole of superstardom—the one with Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts up on top.

The truth is that Ventura is not bowing out of celebrity at all. On the contrary, he’s losing the annoying day job, with a resume that’s a lot longer than it was four years ago. It’s padded not with memorable political achievements, but with major media appearances. Just so, will anyone read it if it doesn’t arrive on the State of Minnesota’s letterhead? Perhaps the biggest surprise is yet to come for Ventura. Will Tim Russert, David Letterman, and Hugh Hefner still come calling when he’s no longer putting the “guber” back in “gubernatorial?”