So how would you like to have been Tim Pawlenty yesterday, who was informed not by Mitt himself, but by Tagg Romney that he had been passed over for the vice presidential nomination for the second straight cycle?
It must have been a bitter cup indeed. Four years ago the McCain campaign had all but settled on TPaw before deciding he was such a cipher that he wouldn’t move the dial an inch. Being rejected in favor of Sarah Palin must have seemed, at the time and even more in retrospect, as sorta like getting dumped by your high school sweetheart after years of slavish devotion in favor of that troglodyte who used to beat you up during recess.
So now this time around TPaw spent months hearing that Mitt actually wanted a nondescript running-mate, acceptable to everyone and posing no danger of distracting attention from the Big Chief. Pawlenty certainly qualified, having abundantly demonstrated during his own brief presidential campaign that no quantity of visigothic rhetoric could make hearts beat either for or against him (the efficient cause of his demise, let us remember, was his inability to get a couple of thousand people to show up for him at an event a couple of hours down I-35 from his home state). With no day job, Pawlenty dutifully went wherever the campaign sent him and mouthed its talking-points. And now he’s again passed over in favor of a guy who’s been attacked by the bishops of his own church as somewhat morally depraved, and who, in Charles Pierce’s vivid phrase today, is “still the high-school kid living off Social Security survivor benefits and reading Ayn Rand by flashlight under the sheets.”
Pawenty remains a solid option for a minor cabinet position if Romney-Ryan win, and for all we know, could be on the short list for Veep in 2016 if the ticket crashes and burns. Lord knows he’s been vetted.
