Tim Pawlenty announced his campaign for President in Des Moines todayon the rooftop terrace of the State Historical Building. The sun, wind, airplanes and traffic on the streets below cooperated, for the most part, as the domes of the Iowa Capitol gleamed in the background. It was a good day for preaching to the choir.
Pawlenty drew a respectable crowd. I’ll call it 150 to 175 spectators and a generous cadre of media. His campaign gets points for staging and for making sure there were enough staff and volunteers on hand to capture the contact information of as many people in the crowd as possible. The Iowa Caucuses are nothing if not an organization game. It looks like the Pawlenty folks are well aware of this.
After clearly and for the record announcing his candidacy for President of the United States, the former Minnesota Governor launched into a speech written to reinforce he was not Barack Obama. ( I can’t believe many people get them confused, but they must.)
There was much talk of Obama’s failures and an equal number of references to Pawlenty’s own self identified honesty. Apparently, Pawlenty is rather impressed with his special ability to tell the truth and he is convinced no one else in the race shares this trait. Maybe I am alone, but whenever a person repeats how honest he is, I get a little suspicious. But, Pawlenty was here to rally the troops and I suppose honesty polls well.
Healthcare: Pawlenty said his healthcare plan in Minnesota would be used as a model for what he would do as president and “my plan is the opposite of ‘Obamacare.’” This, of course, begs a question. Since a main Pawlenty objection to the Obama plan is that Americans are “mandated” to buy health coverage, would the Pawlenty plan mandate Americans not be insured? But, I digress.
Immigration: Pawlenty did not equivocate, “I am for legal immigration.” He talked about how the U.S. is based on the rule of law and that we must uphold immigration laws. Whew. That clears that up.
Ethanol: Pawlenty did show some courage by standing in Iowa and saying ethanol subsidies should be phased out. He did this mostly to prove he was a man willing to say the unpopular (see speaking the truth above), but I will give him credit for saying what he meant in this case.
Education: When asked by Des Moines Roosevelt High School graduating senior Alex Patch about education, Pawlenty spent an odd few minutes summarizing the documentary film “Waiting for Superman” before concluding he was against the “government monopoly of public education” and for choice. Parents should be “resourced” and given the choice to send their kids to the government monopoly schools (if they are silly enough to choose that), charter schools (if they want another public option), another monopoly school through open enrollment, private schools or home schools.
Pawlenty was most passionate about his education answer during the question and answer period, which made me think he might be running for the wrong position (note: I say “passion” with the caveat I may have been mistaken since passion is often hard to discern in Pawlenty without the aid of highly tuned computers). Pawlenty had spent a major portion of his overall time today talking about how the federal government needs to scale back and stay out of Americans’ lives. For instance, the federal government should stop administering Medicare and send the money to the states in a block grant. This attitude seems to conflict with Pawlenty’s answer to Patch that the federal government should set policy to break up public education and teachers unions. One would think Pawlenty would want to leave such things to the people and their local and state governments.
All and all, Tim Pawlenty did not stumble, meaning his campaign can count today as a win. Today’s sparkling May skies will eventually turn to January snow showers. It gets harder from this point on, because the game turns on finding new supporters to add to the choir. Pawlenty has a lot of work to do before then to inspire Iowans to trudge to their Caucus and stand up for him. And, since he assured us many times he can be trusted to tell the truth, we know Pawlenty is in this to win.
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(In the ‘you have to appreciate the irony of the timing’ category is this story; Former Pawlenty staffer pleads guilty to public intoxication. I am not suggesting this young man’s problems are humorous, or that Mr. Pawlenty should be held accountable for his staffer’s drunkenness. I just found it ironic.)
Graham Gillette can be reached at grahamgillette@gmail.com
This entry was first published as a Des Moines Register blog entry.
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