Almanac: At the Capitol

It seems Gov. Pawlenty's national press buzz reached a new height in the past week. The London Times declaring "One candidate has risen to the top of John McCain's shortlist" is huge. There's also a new critical mass (often quoting each other) saying he's McCain's guy. As suspected, their appearance together last week created more fodder on the possible future GOP ticket.

Most of this recent round of press seems to conclude that Pawlenty hasn't been vetted by the national press and lacks the political machine most VP candidates possess. What surprises me the most is how much the out of towners like the Washington Post seem to make about his joke about his wife and his love life.

Maybe we're just used to governors joking about reincarnated as a DD bra, but the local press was pretty mild on this. I guess I've got to say, I thought it was funny. We're used to him joking about and gushing about his obviously adorable (and extremely smart) wife. He's often referred to her as his "red-hot smoking wife" and on the night of his last inaugural ball he upped it to his "blue-hot smoking wife" (watch the clip, it's priceless) when she had a particularly steamy blue dress on. Now I've been plenty tough on TPaw and he seems to be rather annoyed with me lately too, but I got to say I don't get the national press obsession with a joke that was pretty funny. For those of us who know Pawlenty, it wasn't out of character and his sense of humor is a quality that usually makes him better to work with.