Ventura attributes the contradiction to his own doing, referring to his days as a performer on the wrestling circuit.

“I’ve created Jesse Ventura. He’s my business. He’s my corporation. I speak of him in the third person,” he says. “But then again, I think once people see me and know me, they realize some of it’s hype, and some of it’s not.”

Interacting with students, Ventura says, renewed his faith in the political system—something he’d all but given up on as he left office in 2002.

“The young people made me feel good about it,” he says. “They’re exceptionally bright, they want to know about it, they want to improve it. I was in the military at their age, which doesn’t allow you to be too political.”

As he mulls a presidential bid for 2008, Ventura says he’s going to hold onto his relationship with Harvard—if not as a tenured professor, then as a devoted fan of the women’s hockey team, a group he got to know personally during his days working out in the varsity gym.

It doesn’t matter where you’re from, Ventura explains, it’s where you are that matters, remarking that he turned Harvard into his second home.

“I’m a Harvard man,” he concludes, and although he may not be found at Daedalus on weekend nights, Ventura know’s Harvard’s hot spots.

“I’d go [to the Kong] Sunday afternoons, and it was pretty laid back and quiet,” he says, praising the restaurant’s lemon chicken. “They were probably still cleaning up then.”

—Staff writer Leon Neyfakh can be reached at neyfakh@fas.harvard.edu.