Tim Pawlenty

Tim Pawlenty

Tim Pawlenty is the first Republican presidential candidate to come to Washington County this summer. When I walked into the Washington Library there were twenty or so elderly people seated around the tables. It was clear they weren’t expecting a big crowd as one of the volunteers ran to get some more chairs. I’m 53 but other than the volunteers and Pawlenty, I was one of the youngest people in the room.

Pawlenty arrived a few minutes after 8:00 am and without any introduction he started in with a short speech. It didn’t take him long to start criticizing President Obama who he described as the most inept President since Jimmy Carter. He particularly criticized the health care bill, the stimulus bill and the mounting deficits.

Though he didn’t mention her by name he took some swipes at Michelle Bachman. He described how all the Republican candidates will talk about being pro-life, for traditional marriage, border security, strong defense and for limited government. What makes him different is that “he as done something about it.” He then went on to list some of his accomplishments as governor of Minnesota. Items he mentioned included limiting the power of public employee unions, cutting taxes, and balancing the budgets.

Then came the sob story. Child of working class parents, his mother died when he was 16, his father lost his job as a truck driver and his brothers and sisters sacrificed so that he could be the first in his family to go to college.

After some generic remarks about the importance of freedom he asked for questions. The first questioner, a guy with a long white beard and wearing overalls asked if the current situation in Minnesota’s government reflected poorly on his years as governor. Pawlenty blamed the recent shutdown on the new governor and his misguided policies. Question number two came from an old guy wearing a Marine t-shirt that didn’t quite cover his belly. He asked about “dealing with all this terrorisms.” We learned that Pawlenty was the first governor to send troops to the border when President Bush asked for them; that we need to maintain security and our defense budget. He took some jabs at Obama’s Middle Eastern policy and said, “we need to stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel.”

I asked him if he saw the growing disparity in wealth as a problem and if so, how would he fix it. He seemed to like this question. He talked about improving and growing the economy, getting government off the backs of business people, not inciting class warfare. From this he mentioned educational disparity and threw in the stat that 1/3 of high school students are dropping out. The key difference is the parents who should be given a choice of sending their children to the “government school” or to private school’s or they should be allowed to home-school, if they don’t want to use the “government school.” I assume “government school” meant public school.

Questions followed about the use of Executive Orders, an invitation to Crawfordsville (birthplace of the Republican Party), Social Security (President Obama should lead, he might use “means testing” so the wealthiest recipients might not get cost of living raises, and he argued for privatization; unemployment (put people back to work and reform welfare) and energy (drill in ANWAR, more off-shore drilling, use new methods of finding natural gas, and an emphasis on renewable’s “when they make sense.”

A lady asked him to autograph her book, and so I asked if I could ask one more question. He said yes. In answering the question about Social Security he also talked about defense spending and reiterated his strong support for Israel, including a comment that we need to defend them and he used his “shoulder to shoulder” line again. So I asked, if you were President and led the country to war against Iran to help Israel, would you raise taxes to pay for the war? He said it is a hypothetical question, but that he does not like to raise taxes. I said, “So my children would pay for it?” He went back to the hypothetical line so I said, “it seems we are involved in two of those hypothetical wars right now. He then said it was time to end and started his autographing process. I don’t think I was being overly sensitive but when I stood in line to shake his hand, before he got to me, he turned and went to the other side of the room. When I went over there, he went back to table, at which point I decided the guy is either a bit of a weasel, or he is scared of me. Neither are qualities I want in a President.