A Day for Republicans

I watched Tim Pawlenty, the former two-term Republican governor of Minnesota on The Daily Show Wednesday night. Talking with Jon Stewart increasingly has become a de rigueur baptism under fire for politicians. Pawlenty’s performance impressed me enough to suggest he might well grasp the GOP presidential nomination in 2012. He’s articulate. Youngish-looking (he’s 50). Pleasing to look at. He’s tall (he towered over Stewart). Not incendiary, like Sarah Palin, et al. Seemingly willing to not be locked into conservative dogma (though that might hurt his chances in the primaries).

As a foil to Barack Obama, Pawlenty would be a formidable opponent. Dare I say it?—the Great White Hope. Unlike Palin, or for that matter Newt Gringrich, Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee, Pawlenty is not a divisive national force. He doesn’t start the campaign with sizable portions of the population questioning his intellect, his mean-spiritness, his religion or his capacity to project an image of service—unlike the rest of the current field, he doesn’t look like he’d do anything to secure the nomination. He doesn’t look desperate.

Nobody gets to be a governor without having sharp fangs or teeth. Pawlenty, to be sure, has them. But keeping them out of sight, for now, has made him attractive, as far as the Republican competition goes, to Independents and disenchanted Democrats. As the campaign progresses, it will be interesting to observe how he changes, if at all.

I noted with amusement last night Pawlenty tucked the tail of his suit jacket under his tush so the collar wouldn’t ride up as he was sitting, a homage to William Hurt in Broadcast News. Hurt, you might remember, played the fatuous though telegenically pleasing news anchorman in the movie, while the more erudite Albert Brooks had to content himself being an off-camera presence. One on-air trick Hurt tried to teach Brooks was the jacket-tail-tuck. It didn’t work for Brooks, but Pawlenty’s jacket collar was a model of comportment. By the way, so was Stewart’s, and he didn’t do the tail-tuck (for a full view of the extended 20 minute interview, here’s a link: http://www.thedailyshow.com/).

Native son politics might also play a part in Pawlenty’s possibilities. Electoral map arithmetic favors choosing him as the GOP standard bearer. To unseat Obama, Republicans need to shift just one or two states from Blue to Red status. Minnesota has not given its electoral votes a red tinge since 1972. Pawlenty might provide added incentive Gopher State voters need to send one of their own to the White House. Of course, had Al Gore secured his home state of Tennessee’s support in 2000, he, not George W. Bush, would have won that election. So, let’s not count any electoral votes just yet.


It’s impossible to ignore Sarah Palin. Try as I might, she’s an immovable force from my keyboard. Yes, I was offended she used the term “blood libel” when criticizing those who criticized her for incendiary remarks they (and I) say created a climate conducive to physical attacks on elected officials that culminated in the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the deaths of six and the wounding of 13 others last Saturday in Tucson.

In her seven-plus minute video released Wednesday (http://www.facebook.com/sarahpalin), she shows no apparent regret or shame. She lacks the intellect to understand the nuance of her actions. Perhaps she should read Goebbels. Then she might come to understand how repeatedly attacking, dehumanizing, a foe with suggestive images and language, eventually leads to a society that permits despicable acts. Palin ignores—or just doesn’t get—how her own actions impact others. Instead, she wraps her political dissent in patriotic imagery.

Equally galling is that it took Palin four days!!! to condemn the shooting.


Candor. It’s a trait we don’t often get from our politicos. One of the the more refreshing remarks of the last few years was the way Obama categorized the November election results. He called it a “shellacking.” Few would argue with his wording, yet fewer elected, and non-elected, officials would dare utter such a realistic appraisal. I don’t mean to suggest we should vote for someone because they express themselves coherently and accurately. But I am sensitive to the hypocrisies that sometimes surface.

Consider that for many years conservatives have lambasted the entertainment media for being too permissive, for extolling violence and sex. Yet conservatives time and again refuse to place limits on the sale of assault weapons. They remonstrated against the fictitious Murphy Brown when she had a baby out of wedlock, yet issued nary a word of condemnation when Bristol Palin became an unwed teenage mom. They rallied behind her grit and advanced her as a paragon of virtue, endorsing her role as an apostle of abstinence.