Pawlenty, Everyone's Number Two?

At the Washington Post, Chris Cilizza lays out a four-point path for Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor who announced yesterday his exploratory committee to run for president in 2012. Of the four points, Cilizza's first might be most compelling:

Everything to everyone: Usually trying to be all things to all people is a recipe for political disaster. But, in Pawlenty’s case it may well be an advantage. Pawlenty isn’t likely to be the first choice of any of the GOP’s disparate interest groups but there is also no group that is adamantly opposed to the idea of him as the nominee. And, a look back at the last two Republican presidential nominees — George W. Bush and John McCain — reveals that the party tends to pick the person who is able to appeal to the broadest number of constituencies within the party rather than the person who embodies the ideal pick of a single constituency group. Pawlenty, at the moment, is lots of peoples’ second choice.

Read the whole thing here. 

In related news, Pawlenty will be speaking this evening at Vanderbilt University in Nashville with former White House economic adviser Christina Romer.