Here in Minnesota, our governor, Tim Pawlenty, an aw-shucks wingnut who has served two terms despite never receiving fifty per cent of the vote, announced Tuesday that he will not seek a third term in 2010. So maybe I'll never again have to hear my mother say, "He's such a good advertisement for Minnesota!" She means he doesn't wave his arms around, like Wellstone, or drink and cuss and dress weird and criticize religion, like his predecessor Jesse Ventura. Since she hates reading signs on church doors to the effect that guns are banned in the pews, I slyly remind her she can thank her governor for that and then enjoy the way her face darkens, a big cumulus cloud floating past the sun.
"Well, I don't like that," says she, "but he's been such a good thing for Minnesota." The part about "not liking that" is the puffy cumulus cloud. How he's nevertheless "been such a good thing for Minnesota" is the sun pouring through again after the cumulus cloud has drifted past. Where else can you enjoy such polished, poetic prose illuminating the political scene?
The game with mom may not be over yet, for Pawlenty means to run for president. I don't see it. The Republicans' electoral strategy is apparently to hope for a terrorist attack and then blame it on Obama. If it works, it will work for someone other than Pawlenty, who has no credentials in national security. No-new-taxes-no-matter-what is not going to distinguish you in a field of Republicans attempting to appeal to The Base.
A few years ago, when a state Democrat complained about being "shut out of the process," Governor Pawlenty indulged himself in a public taunt. "If Democrats want to have some input, they should win some more elections," he smilingly sneered. The Democrats have since won a lot of elections and now have large majorities in both chambers of the state legislature. But it hardly matters: having failed to override the governor's veto of their budget plan, they are apparently reduced to watching him exercise his dubious prerogative to "unalot." You don't need the murky details. The big picture is that Pawlently is king, and it can't be good for my state that he'll be wielding his power with an eye toward impressing Republican primary voters across the country instead of ones less easy to read residing in places like Moorhead, Anoka, and Winona.
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