A Pawlenty cool customer in Denver

But why wouldn’t the governor show the kind of courage that he finds so praiseworthy in McCain — the courage to do the unpopular thing?

Challenging Democrats on gas tax
Pawlenty noted in his defense that even the chairman of the House Transportation Committee, a fellow Minnesotan, Rep. James Oberstar, would not put a federal gasoline tax increase to a vote in his committee. “If Democrats are pointing to the gas tax as the future of transportation funding and as something they support,” then why won’t they put it to a vote?

Pawlenty said governor and legislators should look at state-private partnership deals to raise revenue for highways, as well as more use of state bonds, and congestion pricing so that drivers would be charged for using roads at peak times.

He added, “I’ve been governor since 2003. During the first four years of my administration, there was more infusion of money into roads and bridges by a long shot than any other comparable time in the modern history of the state.”

He also said “the definitive word on the 35W bridge issue comes from the National Transportation Safety Board). There are some people on the other side of the aisle who have tried to — sadly — politicize the bridge issue. The NTSB has publicly stated they have leading theories as to why the bridge fell."

He added, "The final word on this won’t come until the fall. The leading theories relate to a design flaw in the original design and construction of the bridge dating back to the 1960s, as well as some weight distribution issues ….”

Another charge Democrats talk about using against Pawlenty is the 2003 murder of Dru Sjodin, a student at the University of North Dakota, by a sex offender named Alphonso Rodriguez who was released from a Minnesota facility.

Did the Pawlenty administration make a mistake in releasing Rodriguez?

The decision to release Rodriguez, Pawlenty said, was made under the administration of his predecessor, Jesse Ventura.

“The terms and conditions of probation were decided after I became governor,” Pawlenty added.

He also said “there was a lot of misinformation about whether we somehow at the time were going to release sex offenders for budgetary purposes.” But he argued that he issued an executive order mandating that all the most dangerous sex offenders in Minnesota be considered for civil commitment, a process that would keep them locked up even after they finished serving their full criminal sentence.

On such nitty-gritty historical detail will be fought the battle over Pawlenty’s future, whether in 2008 or in 2012, if he runs then.

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