Jennifer, with all due respect to you (and Bill Kristol), I disagree about Lieberman. In selecting Joe Biden as a running mate, Barack Obama chose reputation over geography. John McCain can’t afford to do the same.

Nor does he need to. What McCain needs are electoral votes in unexpected places. That’s why Minnesota’s popular governor Tim Pawlenty suddenly makes the most sense for McCain’s running mate. Like others, I have trouble suppressing a yawn when I hear Pawlenty’s name. Most Americans have never heard of him. He’s never felt the heat of national politics. And the press will have almost no interest in explaining, much less understanding, his Sam’s Club Republican theories. But remarkably, Minnesota has become a competitive state this month. At a time when Republicans barely have an edge in Colorado, New Hampshire, and Virginia, a bet that Pawlenty could push Minnesota into the Republican column doesn’t sound crazy any more.

This is not merely wishful thinking. Bush lost Minnesota by 3 percent in 2004 and 2 percent in 2000. The latest Rasmussen poll has Obama up by 4.5, but earlier in the summer Obama was up by double digits. Last week, a Survey USA poll had Obama up by only 2. And in a year when the GOP is facing humiliation in Senate races, Al Franken can’t get ahead of incumbent Norm Coleman. (The more I think about it, bringing national attention to the fact that the Democrats are running this rude, hot-headed, and infrequently funny liberal can’t be such a bad thing for McCain.)

There have been empirical arguments against Pawlenty all summer. Rasmussen did a poll that suggested that putting Pawlenty on the ticket might encourage fewer Minnesotans to vote for McCain. This seems nonsensical and probably just captures the stronger opinions of the state’s McCain haters. A University of Minnesota blog argues that Pawlenty’s high approval rating has fallen this year, with rumors that he is on McCain’s VP short list. But there is no escaping that fact that Pawlenty is a proven vote getter in Minnesota, even in 2006, when Republicans were getting beaten up everywhere else.

Pawlenty is also well-known in neighboring Wisconsin, a state John Kerry won by a mere few thousand votes in 2004 and where Obama’s double digit lead has also been cut in half this summer.

The McCain campaign will never create the national buzz or excitement that Obama has, even with a running mate like Bobby Jindal or Sarah Palin. McCain has to accept the fact that if he is going to win, he is going to win dull, carving out a tiny lead in battleground states. Pawlenty has a chance of contributing to that strategy in some small, narrowly focused way. That makes him good enough.

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