Veep Watch: Pawlenty and the tire gauge
The McCain campaign storyline that Barack Obama is nothing more than a self-important celebrity with little in the form of substantive ideas has trickled down to the short list of McCain VP contenders, most notably Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. He has consistently been included in the top 3-5 names being heavily considered by the GOP nominee as his running mate. Today in Iowa, he showed everyone just how much he wants the job.
Pawlenty was attending the opening of a GOP election office in Ames, IA when he spontaneously broke into a monologue about Sen. Obama and how risky/egotistical/silly the Dem nominee really is.
Two notable snippets from his chatter with the media are his subtle comparisons of voting for Obama to “bungee jumping off a cliff” and mocking Obama or the now infamous quote about making sure every American properly inflates their tires to save on gas consumption.
Pawlenty warmed up the crowd by telling an Ollie and Lena joke, then launched into his brief remarks. “The people of The United States of America and the people of Iowa are wise. Voting for Barack Obama for president of the United States, leader of the free world and commander-in-chief is the political equivalent of bungee jumping,” Pawlenty said, “especially if you’re a little up there along there in the way of life — you think it might be a good idea or interesting at the time and then you gete to the edge of the cliff and look over and you think, ‘This is not such a wise idea.’”
Pawlenty a few minutes later pulled a prop out of his pocket. “Barack Obama stood up at a speech recently and said said that one of the things that is really important from energy policy from his standpoint is to check the pressure in our tired, so here’s a tire gauge and you go out in the parking lot here and check your tires. Now, the interesting thing - - we want you to have good pressure in your tires, you know, it will very mildly add to your fuel efficiency but checking the air pressure in your tires is not an energy policy for the United States of America,” Pawlenty said. The crowd applauded.
How many points does this little performance score with McCain and his VP search team?
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……. about a 70 on a scale of 200, 200 being near Mensa perfect.
……..on the other scoreboard, not as many points as McCain may have inadvertently contributed to Obama’s fund raising for July (it could top the $54 mil in February)…. refer to David Plouffe’s astute analysis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFMUfjUI5Ro
Nonetheless, Gov Pawlenty continues to try and please his boss, McInsane: “I have a wife who genuinely loves to fish. I mean, she will take the lead and ask me to go out fishing, and joyfully comes here,” the governor said before adding, “She loves football, she’ll go to hockey games and, I jokingly say, ‘Now, if I could only get her to have sex with me.’”
Offshore drilling will increase oil supply by 1%
Inflating tires will decrease oil demand by 5%
Which one makes more sense?