Editorial: A native son, a so-so record

Star Tribune Editorial

One need not be rooting for former Gov. Tim Pawlenty to unseat President Obama in 2012 to admit to feeling a twinge of Minnesota pride on Monday as Pawlenty announced the formation of a presidential exploratory committee.

It's been 27 years since a native son was a serious presidential contender. That hiatus has been too long for Minnesotans who want to enlarge this state's visibility and its influence on the nation and the world.

But Pawlenty is no Hubert Humphrey or Walter Mondale. He ranks as a staunch antitax, small-government conservative, well to the right of the people who called themselves Republicans in Humphrey's heyday.

Eight years as governor yielded for him lesser national name recognition than Mondale and Humphrey had. Both were Democratic U.S. senators who went on to be vice presidents and mounted several presidential bids between 1960 and 1984.

Also unlike Mondale and Humphrey, Pawlenty lacks a record of accomplishment strong enough to command an undeniable place in the national big leagues.

By Republican lights, he was an acceptable governor, in that he kept DFL attempts to raise state income taxes at bay and agreed to only one significant tax increase -- no, make that a fee -- on his watch, on cigarettes.

Pawlenty didn't just push the state's budget problems onto local governments. He also pushed them forward to his successors, as attests the 2012-13 state budget deficit, now pegged at one of the nation's largest at $5 billion.

The former governor can point to little that qualifies as the kind of cost-saving innovation that ought to go national. He combined a state agency or two, for puny savings.

He promoted a teacher performance-improvement effort and tax breaks for business investors in selected spots in Greater Minnesota. Both programs were found in subsequent independent audits to produce little gain.

Only modest steps toward cost-containing health care improvement occurred on his watch, while the cuts he made in health insurance eligibility and a host of other social programs added to the misery of the poor and vulnerable.

As governor, Pawlenty was a true friend of Minnesota's National Guard, and made more than his share of trips to war zones. Still, his foreign policy experience is meager at best.

But Minnesotans also know that it takes more than a friendly manner to lead the most powerful democracy in human history.

We invite the GOP's presidential kingmakers and national observers to look beyond personality, to the Pawlenty record.

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