His announcement registered with broadcast and print media across the country in headline roundups and news digests, but most analysis of note came via cable TV news networks and major newspapers’ Web sites. Their focus fell on his future as a national political figure, with some sidelong glances at his role in the Al Franken-Norm Coleman struggle for Minnesota’s second U.S. Senate seat.

On MSNBC, commentator Lawrence O’Donnell called Pawlenty ” the best player [Republicans] have,” to which Pat Buchanan (himself a former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination) replied that while he’s “an attractive fellow” who is “doing the right thing” by not running for re-election, “[Alaska Gov. Sarah] Palin will wipe the floor with him” in 2012.

On CNN, anchors Wolf Blitzer and Jack Cafferty recalled Pawlenty as the 2008 VP also-ran who might have made the GOP ticket more competitive.

The Boston Globe’s Political Intelligence blog writes that a new CNN/Opinion Research poll shows T-Paw trailing badly in the early running for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination to a man who’s already a former governor: Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. Indeed, Romney’s out-of-office success as a candidate has caught Pawlenty’s eye as an example, the New York Times’ The Caucus notes.

If he takes it, Pawlenty’s road to the White House would pass through Iowa, where the Des Moines Register’s Iowa Politics Insider says he has well-placed friends and admirers from several road trips he made on behalf of Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign.

Pawlenty’s banquet-patter about building the party with Sam’s Club Republicans may get stale by 2012, warns the National Journal’s Hotline. He’ll have a chance to start refreshing his rhetoric this weekend in Washington, D.C. There, he’ll address not only the College Republicans‘ national convention, as he mentioned Tuesday, but also a gathering sponsored by the Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA), according to Politico,

(RNLA fundraising for Norm Coleman’s post-election efforts to regain his Senate seat prompted a DFL Party complaint to the Federal Election Commission early this year. An RNLA “Stop Al Franken from Stealing the Election” Web page, with headline altered to “Stop ACORN,” still solicits donations of $5,000 — an amount exceeding legal limits, the DFL charged in its yet-unresolved complaint.)

The Washington Post’s The Fix pushed the Franken-Coleman angle the hardest, seeing Pawlenty’s “retirement” as a potential game-changer. The theory goes that with no worries about wooing Minnesota voters hungry for a second senator, Pawlenty might actually withhold an election certificate from Franken even after the Minnesota Supreme Court rules:

So, if Coleman decides he wants to take the case to the federal level if he were to lose at the state court level, there’s now a significantly higher likelihood that Pawlenty would be receptive to such a move.

It’s never too early to handicap 2010 for political wonks, and the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza has posted his first breakdown of which House seats are most likely to switch parties in the current election cycle. None of Minnesota’s eight House seats make the cut.

By contrast, last year two races were in the national mix. The open Third Congressional District seat was consistently seen as one of the most competitive races in the country, while the Sixth Congressional District contest suddenly seized eyeballs after Rep. Michele Bachmann’s infamous Hardball blowup.

Cillizza is not alone in seeing little potential for political drama in Minnesota in 2010. The Cook Political Report has just two Minnesota races — the Third and the Sixth again — on its most recent list of competitive contests, and both are deemed “likely Republican.”

Rothenberg Political Report includes the same two Minnesota races on its rundown of competitive contests, categorizing both as “Republican favored.”

Heres’ the CNN video (for transcript, click here).

(h/t MinnPost)

Thanks for the memories. Now please go away. Yes, we’re talking about you, Rudy Giuliani. And you, Wolf Blitzer. We no longer wish to be a swing state. Henceforth the residents of the state of Minnesota promise to vote reliably Democratic. Or Republican. It doesn’t much matter which — just as long as you people promise to stop showing up in our little slice of the frozen tundra seeking to feel our pain. But to memorialize the horrors visited upon us during the (still ongoing) campaign season, we offer — in honor of our favorite member of the Statewide General Election Canvassing Board — the G. Barry Anderson Awards.

Betty McCollum

Personally we thought the Andy Rooney date-rape skit had potential: It’s tough to recall now, but back in June it looked as if Al Franken’s Senate campaign was going to run completely off the rails. Despite two years of suffering through fish fries and potluck suppers in East Jesus Nowhere, his campaign was beset by controversies over improperly paid taxes and past writings. But it wasn’t the inevitable frothing of Minnesota Democrats Exposed that put the Franken campaign at risk of losing the DFL endorsement to a little-known challenger from the Trotskyite wing of the party. Rather it was the attacks from Franken’s fellow Democrats, led by Rep. Betty McCollum, that nearly doomed his candidacy. Her sanctimonious outrage over a (rather dull) Playboy article triggered a cattle call of Democratic politicians expressing faux outrage over Franken’s past writings. The comedian’s possibly pending triumph, however, raises hope for a 2014 Diablo Cody campaign.

T-Paw

He even cut off his hockey mullet, dammit: We really, really thought Gov. Tim Pawlenty was a shoo-in. When GOP muckety-muck Ken Mehlman hosts a Georgetown cocktail-and-mini-wiener gathering in your honor and it’s revealed that First Lady Mary Pawlenty refers to you as “45″ behind closed doors, it’s time to start measuring the curtains for Vice President Dick Cheney’s secret bunker, no? Pawlenty couldn’t have telegraphed his desire for the post any more strongly if he’d offered to take on eBay’s Meg Whitman in a steel-cage match. But when it became clear that Sen. John McCain’s appeal was largely limited to (some) former guests of the Hanoi Hilton and beer-distributorship scions, the drab choice of Pawlenty got scuttled for a moose hunter with a unique ability to arouse the Republican base with just three words: “Drill, baby, drill.” Does M-Paw now cry out “46?”

Xcel Energy Center

Let’s play hockey, please: Barack Obama decided to pee on the ice first. On the night that he finally slew the Pantsuited Beast once and for all, Obama showed up in St. Paul to stir the masses with his magic happy talk. A photo that would become one of the iconic images of the campaign was snapped in an Xcel elevator by Time photographer Callie Shell. It shows Obama, surrounded by his wife and advisers, beaming as if he’d just discovered indoor plumbing. Even better: nobody had time to organize a protest or arm the police with $50 million worth of the latest riot attire.

The Republican National Convention

What a gas: Did anyone other than St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, Gov. Pawlenty and a few other insecure, ambitious politicians have any desire to host this four-day excuse to beat on protesters, arrest reporters, scream epithets at cops and hire really high-priced hookers? Does anyone care about whether the world at large has any clue where St. Paul, Minn., is located on a map and whether people view it as a “first-class” city? Can we please go back to being a Cold Omaha that rich people visit only when their nasal passages can no longer reliably process coke? Nobody was impressed by forced exposure to Minnesota Nice Passive Aggression and the Land of 10,000 Cops in Riot Gear. Anderson Cooper will not be returning this winter to hang out at the St. Paul Curling Club. If “this is what democracy looks like,” as the protesters kept insisting, we don’t want any part of it. To quote Meir Kahane and Kelly Clarkson: “Never Again.”

Palin-tology

Let them eat moose: That damned Katie Couric. She ruined everything. Before Sarah Palin performed her excruciating media belly flop on the “CBS Evening News,” she brought the house down at the RNC in St. Paul. Winking her way through a speech notable for its withering contempt for the Democratic presidential nominee, she had pundits (particularly the male variety) swooning. But even after it became clear that she was about as prepared to take up residence at the White House as your typical TV sports reporter, the GOP faithful were positively loopy for Palin. When she returned to Minnesota for a rally in Blaine (along with the old guy at the top of the ticket) just two weeks later, the delirious Palin-ites nearly filled an airplane hanger. But after it became increasingly clear that McCain had no chance of winning Minnesota, we were stuck with the surrogates. And unfortunately it wasn’t Bristol Palin. Or Levi Johnston. Instead we got the first dude — a man (to put it kindly) not known for his rhetorical gifts. But Minnesotans apparently weren’t offended by this snub. Todd Palin’s whirlwind two-day tour of the state was the biggest thing to hit Grand Rapids since the annual Judy Garland Festival.

The Crazy McCain Lady

Now she would have been a bold VP pick: When McCain arrived in Lakeville for a town-hall meeting in October, we were concerned that Minnesota might not be living up to expectations as a swing state. After all, recent McCain-Palin rallies had featured party faithful so riled up by the red-meat rhetoric that they’d spewed death threats at Obama and gnawed the legs off of anti-war protesters (OK, not really the latter). Were nice Minnesotans psychologically equipped to live up to such demanding standards? But then 75-year-old Gail Quinnell wandered up to the stage and let everyone know that we’re just as loony as the rest of the country. The “Crazy McCain Lady” utilized her moment in the political spotlight to declare Obama an Arab, earning a rebuke from McCain and her own skit on “Saturday Night Live.”

Cullen Sheehan

In October Harper’s Magazine reported allegations that Norm Coleman’s close pal Nasser Kazeminy financed lavish shopping sprees for the senator at Nieman Marcus. The Republican’s campaign initially refused to answer any questions about the controversy, brushing off inquiries from both Harper’s and Pioneer Press reporter Dave Orrick. “There are very awful things that are said about people on the blogs,” Coleman revealed. But it was the senator’s campaign manager, Cullen Sheehan, who really transformed the story into Intertubes gold. At an excruciating state Capitol press conference, he repeatedly refused to disclose whether Coleman had received any free suits from Kazeminy. Instead Sheehan recited this mantra over and and over and over and over again: “The senator has reported every gift he’s ever received.” Of course Suit-gate was soon trumped by Donor-gate, after two lawsuits alleged that Kazeminy attempted to funnel $75,000 to the senator.

Neiman Marcus

We’re pretty sure that was Rod Blagojevich trying on a houndstooth jacket over in aisle three: What other clothing store in the country can claim a place at the center of two different scandals during this election season? Coleman may have been responsible for the first free Neiman Marcus advertisement, but it took Sarah Palin to truly put the retailer in the national spotlight. After she was tapped as the VP nominee, the GOP brass were apparently fearful she might show up at the convention in camo waders and a blaze orange overcoat. So they tapped local Republican pooh-bah Jeff Larson to lead the Alaska governor on a $75,000, donor-financed shopping spree at Neiman Marcus. No word on whether she ran into Norm (or Nasser) while at the Nicollet Mall store.

Sixth Congressional District Voters

They’re not anti-American, but they’re definitely pro-Scandinavia: After the best-dressed homophobe ever to represent Minnesota in Congress spread her magic to the whole wide world via “Hardball,” it looked as though her congressional career might be over after just one term. Money poured in from across the country to support the underdog campaign of Elwyn Tinklenberg, and polls showed the race deadlocked. But the nice, racist Scandinavian voters of the Sixth Congressional District had an election day surprise for the pollsters. They gave Bob Anderson — a candidate who wasn’t endorsed by any political party, wasn’t invited to most debates, and hardly campaigned — 10 percent of the vote, thus ensuring that Michele Bachmann would return to Washington. We can vividly imagine the thought process of Ole and Sven while hovering over the ballot: “Bachmann? Isn’t she the one who wants to start gulags for everyone with un-American thoughts? Tinklenberg? I do kinda have to use the bathroom now that I think about it. Anderson? Well, I betcha he’s an awful nice gentleman. I’m sure he’d do a wonderful job in Washington, just like Coya Knutson.”

The Recount

This is dedicated to Eric Magnuson’s goatee: The fifth pile. The third pile. Wrongly rejected absentee ballots. Allegedly double-counted ballots. The 133 missing ballots. G. Barry Anderson. Marc Elias. Tony Trimble. The Lizard People. Flying Spaghetti Monster. G. Barry Anderson. Minnesotans have been forced to learn an entirely new lexicon and nomenclature to fully follow the U.S. Senate Contest That Refuses to Die. And now it’s clear that no matter how much we repeat the totemic words “G. Barry Anderson” over and over and over again, the recount is destined to drag on well into 2009. Even if we don’t end up in the swamps of south Florida with hanging chads and Cruella Harris haunting our dreams, it’s still been a rather gruesome process to behold. But here’s a simple proposal to bring this mess to an end: a lutefisk-eating contest on the state Capitol steps. The Uptake will carry a live feed. G. Barry Anderson will officiate. Whichever candidate can cram the most lutefisk down his throat in 15 minutes goes to Washington. With one caveat: He can never come back.

Alaska’s result has reverberations in Minnesota mostly because both states have yet-undecided races on which Democrats’ chances for a 60-vote filibuster-proof bloc in the Senate depend.

But another echo between Minnesota and Alaska has been sounding this year, as Stevens’ trial and conviction increased the likelihood that his colleagues might soon bounce him from his seat should he win it again. And that would leave Gov. Sarah Palin in a situation somewhat akin to Wendell Anderson’s when he was governor of Minnesota and U.S. Sen. Walter Mondale was elected vice president in 1976.

Anderson resigned and was appointed to replace Mondale in the Senate by his own replacement in the governor’s mansion, Rudy Perpich. Voters punished both men two years later, denying them re-election. Alaska law seems to allow Palin to appoint a temporary replacement but requires a special election within three months.

If Stevens is the winner after the last Alaska vote is counted tomorrow, what advice would Anderson have for Palin? Reached at his office today, Anderson asked to be reminded about the scenarios in the Far North, then demurred for the time being. “Let’s wait and see what happens,” he said.

More intriguing to Anderson at the moment is the possibility of a victory for Stevens’ Democratic rival, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, who is a relative of the politically active Begich clan of northern Minnesota. His uncle, Joe Begich, was mayor of his hometown of Eveleth, Minn., before nine terms representing District 6A in the Minnesota Legislature. (Joe continues to serve the area as a member of the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board.)

Gov. Wendell Anderson was on what became an iconic Time cover Aug. 13, 1973, illustrating the story, "Minnesota: A State That Works."

But the idea that Palin would be wise to study Anderson’s precedent has been rampant on the Internet at least since her star began its rapid rise in August — and to a surprising degree for what some might consider a significant footnote on the national political scene. And Palin has apparently done that homework, or has at least considered the choices that Providence might put before her: whether to appoint herself to the Senate (temporarily) or run in a special election. Last week she told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer the latter option was a possibility, but not the former (video, Senate discussion at 6:00 mark).

The high cost Anderson paid for his two years in the Senate can’t be his favorite topic of discussion. But he agreed to talk again after the dust has settled in Alaska.

My Tuesday adventures began with my shoulder and Mike Huckabee’s shoulder touching — though he didn’t seem to notice.

It ended in front of Babani’s Kurdish Restaurant with a column of riot police who, after firing multiple exploding tear gas canisters a half hour earlier, said “thank you” and “we really appreciate it” in their final effort to disperse the remnants of a particularly dynamic march.

A tour through the multi-level media center at the Xcel was like walking into your television set. Look to your left — it’s Mike Huckabee (”make room, let the governor through!”). Look to your right and it’s former UN ambassador John Bolton (and John Bolton’s mustache) gearing up for an interview at the Fox News radio booth — which, by the way, is set up facing the Air America booth. I never once saw them look up at one another across the 15-foot walkway.

Inside the convention hall, with its enormous LCD screen projecting an also-enormous flag flapping in the digital wind, I stumble upon Xcel security staff in the midst of a briefing.

A man stands before them and speaks clear and loud:

“Remember, Elevator Four is for V.I.P. only. And everybody did a great job with credentials last night — we’re just gonna step it up today. The red credentials are the delegates — matches the carpet!”

Below members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars rehearse their appearance in the evening’s proceedings. Triumphant music is playing.

“Forward!” says one man. “March!” The men begin to march away from their positions in front of the podium.

“Hang on!” yells a man wearing large headphones with a microphone attached. He nudges them back into position. “Let me mark some spots,” he says, laying small strips of green tape at their feet.

A man runs a dust broom across the gloss-black stage and a woman stands at the podium to test the microphone and prompter. She’s reading from the main prompter, the one every speaker uses. It’s huge. She stumbles twice, smiles, and walks away. “Please welcome jazz musish … jazz musiksh …”

I’m sitting in an aisle just behind a special seating area covered in blue velour. Two Secret Service agents walk past. One stops and touches the fabric.

AGENT ONE: Pretty blue velour…

AGENT TWO: Huh?

AGENT ONE: Pretty blue velour…

AGENT TWO: (ignoring Agent One and speaking into his communication device) Sandy? Nick and I are heading out. Where are you?

In the hallway just outside the convention space, a television news anchor records her evening news teaser. The camera rolls and she walks slowly towards it, speaking intensely.

“It’s a good thing the Republican base is pro-life, because Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is pregnant” — pregnant pause –”and she’s keeping her baby.”

The woman records the tease three times.

On the television screens scattered throughout the hallway, a C-Span interview with Ron Paul is playing. A man calls in: “My son is a Ron Paul fanatic — to the exclusion of girls and everything.” Paul chuckles.

On the delegate floor, as jazz musician Al Williams and his band rehearses (it is the smoothest of jazz), a woman shouts into her phone: “Can you hear the entertainment?! We’re on the convention floor!” She’s standing right next to the assigned seats for the Minnesota delegation:

Suddenly my phone lights up with a text message. The first in a burst of Twitter messages about protests and police movements outside.

I’m standing just behind Wolf Blitzer, who surfs the Internet from his broadcast seat. His teleprompter is paused and ready for his next live shot: “With the race in a dead heat, our latest CNN poll…”

The first text message goes like this: “40-60 riot cops reported at 7th and Sibley.”

I tell myself I’m going to stay at the convention.

A man next to me is carrying a spiral-bound notebook with an image of an old newspaper headline on it: “Goldwater wins first ballot!”

A tan hulk of a television news reporter talks into a camera about Sarah Palin: “Virtually everybody says ‘I love her’ — I cannot find a delegate who is not saying, ‘Brilliant pick.’ They love her and they can’t wait to hear from her.”

Another text message, from a concert on the Capitol lawn: “Riot cops at Ripple Effect have rubber bullets, gas canisters, and concussion grenades ready.”

Miss Alaska — not Sarah Palin but the Miss Alaska — poses for a picture in front of the stage. It’s still hours before anybody will take the podium.

A cameraman runs up to a colleague: “I just got Giuliani!”

Another text message about “blocks and blocks of riot cops” and I decide to leave the Xcel. Blitzer’s got it covered, I tell myself.

I walk outside and search for whatever gate will spit me out of the security zone the closest to the State Capitol.

All photos by Jeff Severns Guntzel. Contact him at jsguntzel at gmail dot com.