VENTURA VS. BUCHANAN
How does Jesse Ventura wriggle free from his promise to finish his term as Governor of Minnesota before seeking higher office? He tipped his hand this week by allowing that if he were drafted to run for president he couldn't very well turn down the offer. But an orchestrated draft-me campaign might rub people the wrong way.

Saving the Reform Party from Pat Buchanan, however, might be just the excuse Ventura needs. Buchanan has been openly entertaining the idea of running for the Reform nomination, which suggests that he has written off the Iowa straw poll being held this weekend. He's entered the Republican race too late, and has too much competition from Gary Bauer, to mount a campaign as serious as his 1992 and 1996 bids. The Reform option must be tempting.

But Buchanan is out of step with the views, or lack thereof, of the Reform Party. Perot voters are the most secular constituency in America, and they don't care about the moral issues with which Buchanan remains identified (even if he has shifted his emphasis to trade and sovereignty, where these voters agree with him). Ventura should be able to beat him handily.

CANT WATCH
"HATE MAY HAVE TRIGGERED FATAL BARRACKS BEATING"-front-page headline, the Washington Post, 8/11.

TAX CITY
Jim Bradley, the front-runner for mayor of Salt Lake City, has an idea for boosting local revenues during the 2002 Winter Olympics. "The hotel transient room tax has to be jacked up as high as we can possibly do it," he said. "We have to raise the car rental tax as high as we can possibly do it--even shamelessly high--to generate revenue. ... We have to look at opportunities like that to just screw 'em." Boycotting the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow was a dumb stunt by President Carter (and it led to the Soviet boycott of the 1984 games in Los Angeles). But maybe sports fans ought to consider keeping Deseret deserted.