VP or not VP: Stumping for McCain, Pawlenty speaks softly and carries a little stick

Okay. First of all, we understand the line of talk that dictates neither John McCain nor Barack Obama is likely to opt for a vice-presidential candidate with a high political profile lest they mix up their distinctive "brands." But it’s hard to see how the McCain campaign  can be encouraged by the showing of Tim Pawlenty in his rounds of the network chat shows and talk radio.

Yesterday morning, Minnesota’s governor made his highest-profile appearance yet on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, and once again he looked and sounded like a man out of his league–anxious, not very articulate, and seemingly incapable of veering from his designated talking points or breathing any life into them. With his nervous, 40-watt smile and softspoken nasal monotone, Pawlenty seems more like the dutiful, shirt-carrying nephew of a presidential candidate than everybody’s favorite VP pick. (If his bedroom talk is anything like his public patter, no wonder he has a hard time getting Mrs. P into the sack.)

No gravitas here. And, once he gets outside Minnesota–where his Mr. Nice Guy act plays very differently for reasons that have as much to do with regional culture as the heightened heat and glare of the national media stage–no real charm either. In a word, Pawlenty is dull. If he’s really going to be McCain’s number two, he’ll need lots of time with media consultants, or a long sojourn in the bunker with Dick Cheney come the fall. (In today’s New York Observer, Steve Kornacki gives Pawlenty-as-VP a withering review.)

Ironically, the attribute that may be Pawlenty’s greatest strength as a prospective addition to the GOP ticket has gone almost entirely unremarked in the punditry about his veep chances: As Andy Birkey wrote here a couple of weeks ago, Pawlenty is a man of longstanding, if quiet, evangelical credentials.

Does this matter, you may ask, if Pawlenty himself (not to mention his evangelical ties) is a largely unknown quantity nationally?  It does, actually–if only because Pawlenty’s pastor at Wooddale Church, Leith Anderson, is also the head of the 30-million-strong National Association of Evangelicals.

More: Watch the video TP on This Week. (Pawlenty segment starts around 2:45 into the broadcast.)

Earlier: TPMtv: Pawlenty "may the most boring of the prospective vice-presidential candidates"

See previous VP or not VP items at MnIndy and from the Minnesota Monitor archive.