Courage to Stand

November 29, 2010
Minnesota's soon-to-be-former governor might have chosen a Christian publisher for his memoir, but his story is not principally a religious one. Pawlenty, who was one of Sen. John McCain's finalists for the vice-presidential spot in the failed 2008 Republican campaign, has written a readable political manifesto intended to position him for a future presidential run. It describes his upbringing near the stockyards of South St. Paul as the great-grandson of Polish immigrants. The closing of the stockyards and the death of his mother from ovarian cancer while he was still in high school shaped Pawlenty's fighting mentality and drew him to Ronald Reagan and Republican politics. His marriage to Mary Anderson, a member of Leith Anderson's Wooddale Church, led him to leave the Catholic Church and become an evangelical. His rise from city councilman to state legislator to governor was swift in a traditionally blue state, but his "no-new-taxes" and fiscal austerity platforms are familiar to the point of being clichéd. This book will not surprise his ardent admirers or endear him to many Democrats.