But I'll give him this much: he's the first Minnesota pol in a long time whose national ambitions haven't been met with gales of derisive laughter.

Rudy Perpich made noises about running for president back in the late 1980s, and he might have been taken seriously had it not been for his growing reputation for "goofy" (read "big") ideas. Some of these ideas, like the Mall of America project, were vindicated; others, like his proposal to transport an entire Bavarian castle to Minnesota, not so much.

Later, Paul Wellstone talked about running in 2000 as a sort of Diogenes of Sinope, who would try to keep the real contenders focused on the issues he felt were important.

And the less said about Jesse Ventura, the better.

So let's acknowledge that Pawlenty is a credible candidate (not a strong one, in my opinion). But as a credible candidate, he's got a big hairy problem in the form of the latest Rasmussen poll of Minnesota voters:

Only 38% of Minnesotans say they'd vote for him in a 2012 election, while 50% say they wouldn't, and another 11% are undecided.

Those numbers are brutal enough -- after all, Pawlenty is a second-term governor, a known quantity. But keep in mind that Rasmussen is notorious for over-sampling Republicans by two or three percent in their polls; as a result, Rasmussen is nearly always an outlier. So Pawlenty's real numbers are probably even lower than that.

Right now Pawlenty is going around the country telling people that as a red governor from a blue state, he can compete in traditionally Democratic strongholds. But if he isn't even competitive in Minnesota, that's going to be a very hard sell. Pawlenty may want to shore up his poll numbers at home. Because if he doesn't, his campaign might be over before it begins.