Pawlenty: Extraordinary governor in extraordinary times … or, Pawlenty as a Big Mac

Love him or hate him, Tim Pawlenty has governed during the most extraordinary times in U.S or Minnesota political history in generations.

In my view, Pawlenty has done an extraordinary job. You won’t hear
that from the Capitol insider crowd, but the public has spoken volumes
in polls over the years. [The most thorough and insightful analysis of
Pawlenty's poll numbers is here, written by the HHH Institute's Eric Ostermeier.]

So what has Pawlenty done that makes him popular with the public?

Consider:

• Pawlenty governed during a series of historic budget deficits: In
  2003, the state was short a record-setting $4.3 billion; in 2005, the
  state was short $1.4 billion (the resolution of that deficit resulted
  in a government shutdown and Pawlenty consenting to a "health impact
  fee" to raise $400-some million in new revenue); and this year, the
  state set a new record with a $4.6 billion deficit. To solve this
  deficit, Pawlenty pulled what I called a "Patton" move and figured out how to unilaterally solve the problem himself. Pawlenty’s stamp is on budget resolutions that didn’t raise taxes (yes, there were fee increases). That’s extraordinary.

• On policy, Pawlenty has put his signature on the issues that people care
  about. On education, he’s overseen more money going to K-12 education
  than in all previous administrations (and those increases account for
  inflation) — plus he’s led the no-brainer fight to try to tie
  education spending to student performance. On jobs, he created the
  JOBZ program (sure, there’s been controversy here, but greater
  Minnesota communities that benefited from the program don’t find it controversial).
  On energy, he’s been a leader on renewable fuels. Ordinary stuff at
  first blush, but extraordinary given that there’s been no new money during
  his tenure and Democrats have dominated the Legislature the last four
  years.

• In national politics, Pawlenty charted new territory for the state GOP, putting one of its own on the short list to become John McCain’s vice presidential candidate. That’s extraordinary. Sure, he lost that opportunity to Sarah Palin, but didn’t she ultimately make Pawlenty look even better?

• Finally, and not so obvious to the Capitol insider crowd: Pawlenty has been governor during a war of the longest duration since Vietnam. During the Vietnam war, Minnesota’s governors were DFLer Karl Rolvaag (1963-67), GOPer Harold LeVander (1967-71) and DFLer Wendy Anderson
  (1972-76). I can’t tell from the online history available to me right
  now, but I’m betting that Pawlenty attended more funerals of Minnesotans who lost their lives in the war overseas than those other three governors combined.

The funerals and services were all over the state, and attending them
was no small commitment of time and energy. I also went to several of
them, and witnessed Pawlenty sitting erect and somber through long
services in packed high school gyms. No quick appearances at wakes. Pawlenty thought it was important for the head of state to honor those
whose lives were lost. That’s extraordinary.

Another way of thinking about Pawlenty’s extraordinary leadership is that he’s
governed in the way he got to be governor in the first place.

Last summer, before the Republican National Convention, then-senior editor of Minneapolis-St. Paul magazine (and still a blogger for the magazine) Brian Lambert asked me and the Star Tribune’s Nick Coleman to write separate Pawlenty pieces. Our marching orders were to find "the secrets of his success." Not surprisingly, Coleman’s piece was titled "A Personable Empty Suit, by Careful, Conscious Design." Surprisingly to me, my piece was titled "A Study in the Power of Self-Reliance."
[I didn't write the title or the first few paragraphs, but I should have
known that's what happens when my old radio sparring buddy, liberal
Lambert, had editing power over what I wrote.]

In trying to describe the secrets of Pawlenty’s success, I wanted people to think of a hamburger.

The first politician to beckon the image of the humble hamburger was
the last Minnesotan on the national political scene, Vice President Walter Mondale. In 1984 he was running for the Democratic nomination for president. Then-U.S. Sen. Gary Hart (D-CO), another Democratic contender, was campaigning on a slogan of "new ideas." Much like Barack Obama’s "change for America," Hart’s new ideas were not substantively spelled out, policywise.

In a debate, Mondale, after hearing yet again about Hart’s new
ideas, leaned over the podium and said, "When I hear your new ideas,
I’m reminded of that ad, ‘Where’s the beef?’" The audience roared. Mondale clobbered Hart.

"Where’s the beef?"
was the punchline in a television ad for Wendy’s. The ad featured
three gray-haired ladies poking at a "very big fluffy bun" with a
very tiny hamburger on it. The most crotchety of the old ladies barked
repeatedly, "Where’s the beef?" Arguably, "Where’s the beef" was the
best line that Mondale delivered in his entire political career. Not only did
it distill down a difficult political message — that Hart was all
style and no substance — into something that people could intuitively
understand in a heartbeat, but the line also captured the imagination
of the nonpolitical popular culture. The fact that Wendy’s had spent
$8 million heavily saturating the airwaves with "Where’s the beef?" before Mondale’s political appropriation didn’t hurt either.

If Mondale was a Wendy’s hamburger, one with "more beef and less bun,"
then Pawlenty is a McDonald’s Big Mac: "Two all beef patties, special
sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun."

Pawlenty was 14 years old when the McDonald’s Big Mac jingle
was hammered into the nation’s psyche. Perhaps it was only fitting
that in the 2008 presidential election year, McDonald’s tried to revive
the jingle as a TV commercial. The company asked consumers to write
their own songs using the exact words and submit entries to a contest
on MySpace.com. [If you don't remember that, you nailed why McDonald's
dropped that ad campaign.]

If Pawlenty is a Big Mac, then most people paying attention know the
"two all beef patties … lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame
seed bun" of his life story.

I detailed that part of Pawlenty’s life story in the Mpls.-St. Paul mag
piece. Pawlenty is a South St. Paul kid who did really, really well through hard work under adverse circumstances. And he never lost those
South St. Paul roots. [Pawlenty announced his campaign for governor in
2001 in the South St. Paul Croatian Hall, and he made a reference to it
in his "no third term" announcement.] Pawlenty worked his way up the
political trenches from political volunteer to Eagan city politics, to
the state Legislature, and then to governor.

But then I went on to try to factually describe Pawlenty’s special sauce. To summarize:

• Pawlenty can take a complicated issue and make it real at the Croatian
  Hall. Remember when, early in his first term, Pawlenty testified
  before Congress about letting people buy drugs off the Internet, the way Canada does? The FDA raised vague concerns about safety, to which
  Pawlenty replied, "Show me the dead Canadians." Jokes about dead
  Canadians work for Croats.

• As a legislator, Pawlenty knew just as much as his legislative
  adversaries about where all the pots of money were buried and how the
  rules worked. [The culmination so far of that knowledge has been the
  perfectly legal, "gotcha" unallotment strategy.]

• Throughout his political career, Pawlenty has stayed honestly humble. His self-deprecating sense of humor continues.

• And perhaps — and much more interesting now, given what transpired the
  last year — Pawlenty learned that you take the hit for the team. I
  detailed how gracefully Pawlenty got out of the U.S. Senate contest in
  2001 when he got the infamous Dick Cheney phone call. Think
  about how Pawlenty treated Palin after she became the GOP vice
  presidential nominee. No public ill will from Pawlenty (but wouldn’t
  we all want to know the reall pillow talk about Palin that Mary Pawlenty and the governor must have had?).

• Pawlenty’s sincere belief that "It’s not about you" — the first line in Rick Warren’s
  book, "The Purpose-Driven Life," and the sentiment that Pawlenty conveyed at
  his press conference about why he wasn’t running again. "We don’t have
  term limits in Minnesota, but we do have good judgment
  and common sense," Pawlenty said. "We are a government of laws and
  ideas, not personalities. Time marches on, and now it’s time to give
  someone else a chance."

So there you have it, Pawlenty’s
success is that he’s worked hard and stayed real. That "empty suit"
business only works for Pawlenty detractors — not the people being
polled under Pawlenty’s sinecure of the corner office at the Capitol.

Unfortunately,
my Pawlenty as Big Mac — with special sauce, and not a just a mere
hamburger metaphor — got all screwed up when I interviewed him for the
magazine piece last July.

Pawlenty isn’t particularly fond
of hamburgers, whether they’re McDonald’s Big Macs, or Wendy’s "more
beef and less bun."

He’s a Taco John’s guy.
Pawlenty figures he’s been to every Taco John’s in the Twin Cities
area, if not the state. His favorite is Taco Tuesdays, when
"the bold, beefy, crispy, crunchy tacos are specially priced." Not having a clue about Taco Tuesdays, I didn’t think to ask how
many of those bold, beefy things Pawlenty usually orders.

But
what Pawlenty really loves are Taco John’s Potato Oles.
Pawlenty describes them as "delicious and scrumptious." Taco John’s website describes them as their "world-famous, crispy, golden nuggets lightly sprinkled with … secret seasonings."

Secret sauce, secret seasonings. Same
thing. Extraordinary tastes for extraordinary times. That’s Pawlenty.

No Responses to “Pawlenty: Extraordinary governor in extraordinary times … or, Pawlenty as a Big Mac”

1. Anonymous Says:
   June 2nd, 2009 at 11:31 pm

   A lovely hagiography that only a capitol insider could pen. How many people lost health care on King Timmy’s watch? How many jobs disappeared out of the state?

2. SarahJanecek Says:
   June 3rd, 2009 at 3:59 am

   I was remiss in not addressing jobs in the first set of bullet points
   in my post. Pawlenty has governed during the most difficult economic
   times since the Great Depression.

3. Anonymous Says:
   June 3rd, 2009 at 9:03 am

   THIS is a post that only a great right wing spin mistress could compose. The question asked above was: How many jobs has Minnesota LOST under Tim Pawlenty. I did NOT ask, “Did Minnesota do better than the rest of the country when it comes to unemployment.” The chart seems to demonstrate that a conservative fiscal policy at the state level that rewards wealthier tax payers at the expense of others did about as poorly as a conservative fiscal policy at the federal level that rewards wealthier tax payers at the expense of others. That there were slight variations (like the 0.7% difference in April) means that we started in a different place, but the fact remains: we still lost jobs during the Bush/Pawlenty years.

4. Anonymous Says:
   June 3rd, 2009 at 10:14 am

   No one mentions of the Lt. Governor succeeding Gov. Pawlenty.

5. Anonymous Says:
   June 3rd, 2009 at 10:35 am

   Anonymous wants all people to fail as he has done. Tim Pawlenty has worked hard to become successful. So he makes more money than me more power to him. Why punish him and all people who are successful for having a good income. If I had worked harder in school he would be unhappy with me and ask me to pay him by having a highertax.
   BC Bill

6. Anonymous Says:
   June 3rd, 2009 at 4:42 pm

   According to this U of M “Smart Policitcs” article, Minnesota’s unemployment rate has exceeded the national average in only six of the 399 months since 1976: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cspg/smartpolitics/2009/04/iowa_least_affected_by_unemplo.php. All six of those months occurred within the last two years. The reality is that after six years in office, Pawlenty’s budget management “expertise” has left the state with a $6.4 billion dollar deficit. And with the exception of the 2007 transportation bonding bill, which our state’s transportation infrastructure seriously needed, the governor has pretty much had it his way his whole time in office, so there’s no way the DFL can be blamed for the shortfall. I would submit that any corporate CEO with a record like that would have been out on his can years ago.

7. Anonymous Says:
   June 12th, 2009 at 12:51 pm

   The Governor’s supporters have touted his term as a successful one. They claim that he has reigned in spending and taken charge of the legislative process. To be sure, Pawlenty is assertive, and he has been able to simply and concisely communicate his ideas to Minnesotans. His chief accomplishment