Pawlenty has a credibility problem

Governor Pawlenty has gotten by with a lot of dishonesty with his boyish looks and aw-shucks mannerisms. But yet again, here's a perfect example of how his credibility is really zero among anybody who actually thinks. Nick Coleman nails it in his recent column:

"At no point did anyone say the bridge needed to be closed," the governor has said.

But according to an Aug. 19 Star Tribune story by reporters Tony Kennedy and Paul McEnroe, state officials had "talked openly" about the possibility of a bridge collapse.

Inspection reports dating to the 1990s suggested critical issues required "immediate maintenance" and calls for that maintenance grew more urgent after the Pawlenty administration took office in 2003.

Maybe it is coincidence that Pawlenty-Molnau imposed a no-tax ideology on state government, especially in transportation, where Molnau cut back on snowplowing while laying off employees and placing loyalists in key positions.

But what we have now in the Mississippi is a bridge that was carrying 140,000 vehicles a day despite missing bolts, cracked girders, severe corrosion and a tilted pier -- a bridge with parts "beyond tolerable limits."

A leader shouldn't say he didn't know the bridge might collapse. A leader demands to know why his appointees didn't tell him it might fall.

Maybe this catastrophe will result in a few more people using their brains.