I agree with Politico* that the veep pick the Obama campaign feared most was Tim Pawlenty, with his truck driver dad, his mom dying of cancer when he was 16, and his being the first in his family to graduate from college. He could have gone toe-to-toe with Joe Biden on regular guy-ness, and he didn’t have anything like the Ryan plan hung around his neck.
* “The Veep Obama didn’t want to face,” Glenn Thrush
Embattled Farmers 