But the swaggering vice-chairman of Time Warner
complains his fitness-guru wife, Jane Fonda, is
dead-set against it.

I am very serious about running for president - but
Jane doesn't want me to do it, Turner recently told
members of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation,
according to a report in The New Yorker.

Turner also stunned the foundation, which recently
presented him with its World Citizenship Award in
Santa Barbara, Calif., by confessing his marriage
might be in trouble.

We just came from the marriage counselor in
Santa Monica. Jane wants me to become a saint -
but I'm not, Turner said.

Turner gave no other details about his possible
entry into the political arena, or why he and Fonda
are in counseling.

Turner could not be reached yesterday for
comment on the report.

But the specter of the 60-year-old billionaire
throwing his hat in the ring is sure to be a hot
potato for the nation's top politicos, who are well
aware of his jaw-dropping ramblings over the
years.

He once portrayed rival media mogul Rupert
Murdoch - the chairman of News Corp., which
owns Fox Broadcasting, 20th Century Fox and
The Post - as being like the late Fuhrer.

And he once bragged about his power - comparing
himself to Fidel Castro and remarking, Castro's
not a Communist, he's like me - a dictator.

Turner was also known as an unabashed
womanizer before he wed Fonda, who as a movie
star in the '60s, scandalized the nation by siding
with the North Vietnamese - earning her the
nickname Hanoi Jane.

Turner's exploits in college - such as slapping Ku
Klux Klan warnings on the dorm doors of black
students and bellowing Nazi battle hymns outside
a Jewish frat house - could also make trouble for
him.

And Turner once referred to Americans as some
of the dumbest people in the world.

Even at the same awards ceremony in which he
revealed his ambitions to become
commander-in-chief, Turner ad-libbed himself into
controversy - taking potshots at Los Angeles and
talking to God.

Plugging the ultra-violent Warner Bros. flick The
Road Warrior to the audience, Turner quipped:

It's about these real brutish guys ... and they're out
in the desert driving around, fighting over the last
few gallons of gasoline ... You go back to gangs.
It's like L.A.

Talking about the instability of mankind, Turner
went on to say: It's not really our fault, 'cause really
all we are is monkeys without tails.

Looking skyward, he added, Father, I hate to tell
you that.

Also, according to The New Yorker, he reaffirmed
his ongoing hatred of Murdoch, quipping: I like
almost everybody - except Rupert Murdoch and
fundamentalists.

-- Bill Hoffmann - 11/16/98