One of the biggest failures of Minnesota history happened on Pawlenty's watch. McCain's pick of Pawlenty gives us a springboard to highlight the failures of the neoconservative defund and destroy, slash and burn politics.
As a Minnesota Vlogger, I I lived through the awful tragedy of the I-35 bridge collapse last year. At the time, Pawlenty's lieutenant governor, Carol Molnau, was in charge of the MN department of transportation. After months of playing an internal blame game she was finally forced to resign.
Days after the collapse, a demonstration was held as Bush came to tour the devastation:
For those of you who aren't MN residents, this came as a major psychological blow to state residents. Minnesota was always thought of as a place where things just work. What resulted from the devastation was an investigation into the condition of all major bridges in the state considered by the DOT to be in disrepair. Why it took this bridge's collapse and such a loss of life is beyond me.
When questions finally came for Molnau to answer for her involvement in the collapse, MN2020 reported the following:
"Insistent reporter questions concerning the bridge’s inspections record appeared to exasperate and finally frustrate her. She lashed out, invoking her daughter’s daily commuting drive over the bridge to call a halt to that line of questioning.
Herein lies the fallacy, which is a flawed reasoning pattern or argument. The "appeal to pity" or, in Latin, argumentum ad misericordiam, is one of the favorites of folks under fire.
Rather than answer the questions, Molnau retreated from her elected and appointed government leadership roles, recasting herself as a concerned parent. Don’t ask me legitimate questions about my department’s performance, she seemed to say, because my daughter made two of the 141,000 daily Mississippi crossings on I-35W before the bridge fell down."
Sound familiar? Like a certain someone deflecting from his 9 homes with a pity card for his time as a POW?
But what this will mean in a vice presidential debate between Biden and Pawlenty is an even greater advantage for team Obama. Pawlenty's addition to the ticket is expected to bolster McCain's standing in a state that Obama is already winning by 10 points. But there was never a referendum on Pawlenty's leadership. The gubernatorial election took place less than a year previous to the bridge's collapse.
In the end, this will open the door to Joe Biden tearing T-Paw limb from limb on issue after issue and then throwing his failure to properly fund public infrastructure in his face on a national level. Believe me, Kossacks, it's time he got his comeuppance.