Taco Tuesdays
Pawlenty as ebullient as ever (& pass the Potato Oles)
I had a chance to chat with Gov. Tim Pawlenty and his wife, Mary Pawlenty, during the live broadcast of Tom Hauser's "At Issue" program on KSTP this morning.
One would never know that both have been on an emotional roller coaster the last week until John McCain finally made his decision last Friday.
Pawlenty remains as ebullient as ever and plans to work hard for the McCain-Sarah Palin ticket. With Minnesota Republicans' disappointment about Pawlenty being passed over as the veep candidate morphing into excitement about the ticket, there's also a sense of relief. Pawlenty managed Minnesota's historic $4.6 billion state budget deficit crisis well in 2003, and they expect him do to the same in 2009. Current guestimates put the state somewhere between $1 billion and $2 billion short (the total biennial budget is about $32 billion), given current economic estimates.
For more on Pawlenty, be sure to check out the September issue of Minneapolis St. Paul magazine. Senior editor Brian Lambert had the Star Tribune's Nick Coleman and me write "competing" stories on the "secrets of Tim Pawlenty's success." Some PIM readers may recall that Lambert and I had a radioactive radio show on KTLK several years ago. Let me tell you that having Brian as my writing boss and editor was just as radioactive.
Part of what was edited out (and mostly due to space constraints) was how the best way I could think of to summarize the secrets of Pawlenty's success was to think of a hamburger.
The first politician to call to mind the image of the humble hamburger was Vice President Walter Mondale. In 1984 he was running for the Democratic nomination for president. Then-U.S. Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.), another Democratic contender, was campaigning on a slogan of "new ideas." Much like Barack Obama's "change for America," Hart's new ideas were not substantively spelled out, policywise.
In a debate, Mondale, after hearing, yet again, about Hart's new ideas, leaned over the podium and said, "When I hear your new ideas, I'm reminded of that ad, 'Where's the beef?'" The audience roared. Mondale clobbered Hart.
"Where's the beef?" was the punchline in a television ad for Wendy's. The ad featured three gray-haired ladies poking at a "very big fluffy bun" with a very tiny hamburger on it. The most crotchety of the old ladies barked repeatedly, "Where's the beef?" Arguably, "Where's the beef" was the best line Mondale delivered his entire political career. Not only did it distill down a difficult political message -- that Hart was all style and no substance -- into something people could intuitively understand in a heartbeat, the line also captured the imagination of the nonpolitical popular culture. The fact that Wendy's had spent $8 million heavily saturating the airwaves with "Where's the beef?" before Mondale's political appropriation didn't hurt either.
If Mondale was a Wendy's hamburger, one with "more beef and less bun," then Pawlenty is a McDonald's Big Mac: "Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun."
Pawlenty was 14 when the McDonald's Big Mac jingle was hammered into the nation's psyche. Perhaps it's only fitting that in 2008, McDonald's is reviving the jingle as a TV commercial -- but now the company is asking consumers to write their own songs using the exact words and submit entries to a contest on MySpace.com.
If Pawlenty is a Big Mac, then most people paying attention know the "two all-beef patties ... lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun" of his life story.
That story is that he's a native South St. Paul boy, the son of a truck-driver father and a homemaker mother who died of cancer when Pawlenty was 16. Pawlenty was the youngest of five siblings and is the only one to have gone to college. When Pawlenty was in high school, his father lost his job, and times were tough for the family. Pawlenty worked typical teenager jobs like delivering newspapers, and paid his own way through college and law school at the University of Minnesota.
He met his wife in law school, and the couple moved to Eagan, where they are raising two teenage daughters, Anna and Mara. Pawlenty practiced law in the private sector with a major downtown Minneapolis law firm, focusing on school district law. In 1992, he was elected to an open seat in then-reliably Republican, population-exploding Eagan. In 1998, the House Republicans gained the majority and his legislative peers elected him to be their majority leader. In 2002, Pawlenty was elected governor and was re-elected in 2006.
While Pawlenty traveled much tougher personal and financial roads than most middle-class Minnesotans, his solid progression through professional and political ranks is the stuff of a regular hamburger politician.
But it's the special sauce that makes that hamburger a Big Mac.
To find out what it's in Pawlenty's secret sauce, you'll have to read the September issue of Minneapolis St. Paul magazine.
And be sure not to miss the end of the story when former state GOP party chair Ron Eibensteiner starts quoting Rudyard Kipling over a bowl of chicken soup at Zelo.
Unfortunately, my working theory of Pawlenty as Big Mac was smashed to smithereens by the governor himself.
Pawlenty isn't particularly fond of hamburgers, whether they're McDonald's Big Macs, or Wendy's "more beef and less bun."
He's a Taco John's guy. Pawlenty figures he's been to every Taco John's in the Twin Cities area, if not the state. His favorite is Taco Tuesdays, when "the bold, beefy, crispy, crunchy tacos are specially priced." Not having a clue about Taco Tuesdays, I didn't think to ask how many of those bold, beefy things Pawlenty usually orders.
But what Pawlenty really loves are Taco John's Potato Oles. Pawlenty describes them as "delicious and scrumptious." Taco John's Web site describes them as their "world-famous, crispy, golden nuggets lightly sprinkled with ... secret seasonings."
Secret sauce, secret seasonings. Same thing.
One would never know that both have been on an emotional roller coaster the last week until John McCain finally made his decision last Friday.
Pawlenty remains as ebullient as ever and plans to work hard for the McCain-Sarah Palin ticket. With Minnesota Republicans' disappointment about Pawlenty being passed over as the veep candidate morphing into excitement about the ticket, there's also a sense of relief. Pawlenty managed Minnesota's historic $4.6 billion state budget deficit crisis well in 2003, and they expect him do to the same in 2009. Current guestimates put the state somewhere between $1 billion and $2 billion short (the total biennial budget is about $32 billion), given current economic estimates.
For more on Pawlenty, be sure to check out the September issue of Minneapolis St. Paul magazine. Senior editor Brian Lambert had the Star Tribune's Nick Coleman and me write "competing" stories on the "secrets of Tim Pawlenty's success." Some PIM readers may recall that Lambert and I had a radioactive radio show on KTLK several years ago. Let me tell you that having Brian as my writing boss and editor was just as radioactive.
Part of what was edited out (and mostly due to space constraints) was how the best way I could think of to summarize the secrets of Pawlenty's success was to think of a hamburger.
The first politician to call to mind the image of the humble hamburger was Vice President Walter Mondale. In 1984 he was running for the Democratic nomination for president. Then-U.S. Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.), another Democratic contender, was campaigning on a slogan of "new ideas." Much like Barack Obama's "change for America," Hart's new ideas were not substantively spelled out, policywise.
In a debate, Mondale, after hearing, yet again, about Hart's new ideas, leaned over the podium and said, "When I hear your new ideas, I'm reminded of that ad, 'Where's the beef?'" The audience roared. Mondale clobbered Hart.
"Where's the beef?" was the punchline in a television ad for Wendy's. The ad featured three gray-haired ladies poking at a "very big fluffy bun" with a very tiny hamburger on it. The most crotchety of the old ladies barked repeatedly, "Where's the beef?" Arguably, "Where's the beef" was the best line Mondale delivered his entire political career. Not only did it distill down a difficult political message -- that Hart was all style and no substance -- into something people could intuitively understand in a heartbeat, the line also captured the imagination of the nonpolitical popular culture. The fact that Wendy's had spent $8 million heavily saturating the airwaves with "Where's the beef?" before Mondale's political appropriation didn't hurt either.
If Mondale was a Wendy's hamburger, one with "more beef and less bun," then Pawlenty is a McDonald's Big Mac: "Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun."
Pawlenty was 14 when the McDonald's Big Mac jingle was hammered into the nation's psyche. Perhaps it's only fitting that in 2008, McDonald's is reviving the jingle as a TV commercial -- but now the company is asking consumers to write their own songs using the exact words and submit entries to a contest on MySpace.com.
If Pawlenty is a Big Mac, then most people paying attention know the "two all-beef patties ... lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun" of his life story.
That story is that he's a native South St. Paul boy, the son of a truck-driver father and a homemaker mother who died of cancer when Pawlenty was 16. Pawlenty was the youngest of five siblings and is the only one to have gone to college. When Pawlenty was in high school, his father lost his job, and times were tough for the family. Pawlenty worked typical teenager jobs like delivering newspapers, and paid his own way through college and law school at the University of Minnesota.
He met his wife in law school, and the couple moved to Eagan, where they are raising two teenage daughters, Anna and Mara. Pawlenty practiced law in the private sector with a major downtown Minneapolis law firm, focusing on school district law. In 1992, he was elected to an open seat in then-reliably Republican, population-exploding Eagan. In 1998, the House Republicans gained the majority and his legislative peers elected him to be their majority leader. In 2002, Pawlenty was elected governor and was re-elected in 2006.
While Pawlenty traveled much tougher personal and financial roads than most middle-class Minnesotans, his solid progression through professional and political ranks is the stuff of a regular hamburger politician.
But it's the special sauce that makes that hamburger a Big Mac.
To find out what it's in Pawlenty's secret sauce, you'll have to read the September issue of Minneapolis St. Paul magazine.
And be sure not to miss the end of the story when former state GOP party chair Ron Eibensteiner starts quoting Rudyard Kipling over a bowl of chicken soup at Zelo.
Unfortunately, my working theory of Pawlenty as Big Mac was smashed to smithereens by the governor himself.
Pawlenty isn't particularly fond of hamburgers, whether they're McDonald's Big Macs, or Wendy's "more beef and less bun."
He's a Taco John's guy. Pawlenty figures he's been to every Taco John's in the Twin Cities area, if not the state. His favorite is Taco Tuesdays, when "the bold, beefy, crispy, crunchy tacos are specially priced." Not having a clue about Taco Tuesdays, I didn't think to ask how many of those bold, beefy things Pawlenty usually orders.
But what Pawlenty really loves are Taco John's Potato Oles. Pawlenty describes them as "delicious and scrumptious." Taco John's Web site describes them as their "world-famous, crispy, golden nuggets lightly sprinkled with ... secret seasonings."
Secret sauce, secret seasonings. Same thing.
Morning Reports
