Tim Pawlenty!

That is a well-made, albeit a bit over-the-top, political advertisement. I kind of expected it to conclude “Opening in Theaters Next July.”

All this made me realise that I don’t really know that much about Tim Pawlenty.

He is governor of Minnesota (which suggests that he is nice), and has a vague reputation (reaching even me) of being a younger Republican fiscal conservative reformer.

Looking him up on Wikipedia, I find that he is a University of Minnesota graduate. Of Polish and German ancestry. Converted from Roman Catholicism to Evangelical Baptism. (-25 points for negative evolutionary movement) He has a record of supporting Ethanol and talking about clean energy, (-10 points for understandable opportunism) He has also grandstanded on illegal immigration, producing a study about how much money illegal immigrants were costing Minnesota (but not noting how much positive economic impact an available supply of cheap labor produces) and sending the Minnesota National Guard to patrol the Mexican border. (-25 more points) He does not seem to have a completely dazzling record as governor.

I’m afraid it will take more than this nice enough Rah, rah, America! film trailer to make me a Pawlenty enthusiast.