"...a leader doesn't have to be a verbal bomb thrower..."

This is why I like Pawlenty too. Well, part of the reason.

He can have great appeal to those folks in the middle.

We cannot, cannot win without those people.

How was the bill passed with a "whiff of totalitarianism"? Need I remind you that Democrats had a super-majority in the senate, a majority in the house, and the presidency? And that the original bill was passed without reconciliation (only modified via reconciliation)?

This is how legislation works -- you get legislation passed by winning elections, forming a consensus, and fighting for it, not by threatening to destroy the economy by capping the debt ceiling.

I am sick of the clever political slogans and labels. What does ObamneyCare mean? Are the folks who use this term, including Pawlenty, making the claim that Mitt Romney supports Obamacare - even though he says he does not - and will prevent Republicans from repealing or modifying it? Given the performance I've seen from Tim Pawlenty thusfar, I think I'll start referring to him as PALEnty. The guy literally blends into the white wall behind him. One of the criticisms of John McCain was he lacked fire and passion, which seems to apply to Pawlenty as well. He's more enthusiastic about attacking Mitt Romney than he is about attacking Obama, a political strategy Republicans seem to favor. They eat their own and then wonder why voters aren't enthusiastic about GOP candidates. How I miss reason and common sense.

LivingTheHighLif:

Of course, I'm silly and you're a genius because you believe President Obama designed Obamacare after Romneycare and support Pawlenty's reliance on the President's claim to attack a political opponent. First, President Obama didn't design Obamacare; Nancy Pelosi and her liberal colleagues in Congress did. Second, do you know for a fact that the two pieces of legislation are similar? Have you read both and compared them, thereby verifying that what both Obama and Pawlenty said is true? Obamacare is almost 2500 pages long and many of those pages are filled with federal regulations that do not exist in Romneycare. Politicians are known to say things that aren't true for political gain, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if Romneycare and Obamacare have some significant differences that neither Obama nor Pawlenty bothered to mention.

I think it would be reasonable and fair to confirm that Romneycare and Obamacare are similar rather than assuming they are. Didn't you get the memo? Whenever Obama wants to defend one of his liberal policies, he invokes the name of a Republican. Usually it's Reagan or Bush, but for the purpose of promoting Obamacare, it was Romney. I don't know the answer to this question, but since you seem to know everything, perhaps you do. With a Democratic majority in the state legislature in Massachusetts at the time Romneycare was passed, was Romneycare veto-proof? If it was, what purpose would have been served for Romney to veto it and alienate the citizens of his state, as well as legislators he had to work with?

Many Americans, I'm sorry to say, are politically schizophrenic. They claim to want one thing, but vote for candidates who don't support what they want. That's how a far left liberal got to be President of a center-right country. Americans complain because Obama does what other liberals want him to do and not what the American people want him to do and then critize Romney for doing what the people of Massachusetts wanted him to do and not what conservatives wanted him to do. Americans need to make up their minds. Is it about party principles or the will of the people?

Is it true? Has anyone actually compared the two pieces of legislation and confirmed that they are, in fact, similar? As I pointed out to LivingTheHighLif, Obama did not design Obamacare, so how can he claim he designed it after the Massachusetts plan? One of the complaints during the Obamacare debate was that Obama wasn't actively involved, preferring to delegate the policy-making to Pelosi.

Very impressive and very Presidential. Tim Pawlenty is the right man at the right time in the right place. He is exactly what America needs.

One, of my biggest problem with the interview was the fact that it was done remotely. If you're running for president, and you have the opportunity to speak to 4 or 5 million Americans, it might be the prudent decision to take the hour to fly to DC and do the interview in person.

The answer about "outcome-based" medicare payments needs a lot more work. In fact, I have yet to hear anyone explain this idea in a compelling way. To me, this approach seems even more open to fraud, waste and abuse than our current system.

Finally, I generally like Chris Wallace, but sometimes he interrupts just for the sake of interruption. He asked Pawlenty two or three questions at one time (speaking specifically about Pawlenty's MN record), and then interrupts Pawlenty when he doesn't get a three or four sentence answer for three different questions.

Marco, I realize this, like so many other things, just goes entirely over your head.

There are several reasons that Presidents virtually never do remote interviews. One of those reasons has to do with optics - it just looks bad. If you aspire to be president, one of things you must demonstrate to an audience is that you can look presidential. It is very difficult to look presidential as you sit in "one-shot", looking head on into a camera as you struggle to hear a garbled, delayed question coming to you in an IFB.

Purely from an aesthetics standpoint, which Nixon proved in 1960 can be critical in an election, it just looks better when on-camera interviews are granted in-person and preferably in a non-studio setting.

This becomes even more important when you're competing for voters in a very crowded field, and where one bad on-camera interview has the potential to smother your candidacy in its crib - just ask Sarah Palin; almost three years later, she has yet to recover from the Couric and Gibson interviews.

"Neither of the Palin interviews were done remotely."

Well, her handlers could only take her so far. She still had to answer the questions for herself. That, of course, was her problem. She could have done those interviews directly from the Oval Office, and she still would have looked like an idiot.

Pawlenty, OTOH, acted presidential and sounded like he spoke Egnlish as his first language. This isn't unexpected coming from a guy who was a reasonably successful two-term governor. Unlike Palin's disastrous performance, it was the optics that were his problem.

BTW, you might want to look into medication for that nervous laughter you always seem to display. Professional help could do wonders for all that anxiety. Just sayin'.