Courage to Stand: An American Story - eBook

Tim Pawlenty is the two-term Governor of Minnesota. Pawlenty has used innovative and conservative leadership to balance the state's budget, cut spending, reform health care and improve schools without raising taxes. Under his leadership, Minnesota has nation-leading health care, the highest school test scores and a leading economy. Pawlenty has often fought uphill battles as a Republican governor in a very Democratic state. He has been married for over 20 years to his wife, Mary, a former district judge. The Pawlenty's have two teenage daughters.

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 cliched. This book will not surprise his ardent admirers or endear him to many Democrats. (Jan.) Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information.