Can Tim Pawlenty win?

Mr. Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, has become the first of the big-time Republican contenders to officially jump into the 2012 presidential campaign with an announcement on Facebook on Monday. The move to form an exploratory committee is almost a technicality for Mr. Pawlenty, who has been a candidate in almost every way for months.

But now that the Federal Election Commission considers him one, it will force a new discipline on his Minnesota-based campaign staff members, who have been steadily building a campaign since he left the governor’s mansion in January.

And the media will treat him differently, too. The profiles will be tougher. The questions will be more pointed. And the expectations among activists in Iowa and New Hampshire, the sites of the earliest presidential contests next year, will grow as they put Mr. Pawlenty through the political gantlet.

So what are the five biggest challenges for Mr. Pawlenty as he pursues the right to run against President Obama in 2012? The following is the consensus that emerged from discussions with Republican political consultants, many of whom declined to speak on the record because they advise — or hope to advise — one of Mr. Pawlenty’s rivals.

1. Money. The biggest challenge for Mr. Pawlenty will be raising the millions of dollars needed to demonstrate that he belongs in the top tier of candidates competing for the presidency. A man of modest means, Mr. Pawlenty comes from a state of modest means, without a financial center like New York, Boston, Chicago or Los Angeles.

By announcing early, Mr. Pawlenty is betting that he can raise the millions it could take to sustain a campaign past the summer, into the fall and through the contests next winter. But he’s not rich, like Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts. He’s not a former lobbyist with a potentially lucrative Rolodex, like Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi. And he’s not preparing for a shoestring campaign like the one run in 2008 by Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas.

Starting Monday, he has about three months to make a big money push. On July 1, he will have to file a fund-raising report that will demonstrate whether he has succeeded.

2. Visibility. A new Washington Post poll suggests that few people know who Tim Pawlenty is. Nearly 60 percent said they had no opinion of the former governor, suggesting that the money he raises will need to be spent increasing his visibility. The name recognition challenge is not unlike the one faced by Mr. Romney, who spent months polling in the single digits during most of 2007.

3. Message. In the weeks since he left the governorship, Mr. Pawlenty has been road-testing a more conservative message that he hopes will appeal to Tea Party conservatives and establishment party officials alike. But as my colleague Jeff Zeleny pointed out earlier this month, Mr. Pawlenty runs the risk of trying to be all things to all people — and failing on all scores.

More than most of his potential rivals, Mr. Pawlenty has been aggressive in seizing on the issues of the day, whether that’s the union battles in Wisconsin or the budget fight in Washington. The sharp edge to his commentary has helped to swing attention his way but makes shaping a consistent message for the long term a bit more difficult.

4. Fiscal Discipline. Like Senator John McCain of Arizona in 2007, Mr. Pawlenty appears to be building an expensive campaign operation that will burn money at a steady clip now that he’s a candidate. It will take discipline to make sure that he’s not spending money he doesn’t have, on things that aren’t necessary. (Mr. McCain found out the hard way what happens when that discipline is lacking.)

5. Tactics. Of the three states that kick off the presidential nominating season, Iowa is likely to be the most friendly to Mr. Pawlenty, who is from a neighboring state. But his courtship of the state’s heavily evangelical primary voters could be complicated by Representative Michele Bachmann, also of Minnesota, and Mr. Huckabee, who will be aiming for the same audience.

And two other early states — New Hampshire and South Carolina — present challenges of their own for Mr. Pawlenty. In New Hampshire, he’s likely to face stiff opposition from Mr. Romney, who established a home base there in 2009. And South Carolina could be difficult for a Northerner like Mr. Pawlenty, especially if he has to face Mr. Barbour, a Southern governor, or Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker from neighboring Georgia.

The political map of the 2012 Republican primary campaign could be a difficult one for Mr. Pawlenty to navigate. Does he go all out in Iowa the way Mr. Romney did four years ago? And what happens if, as happened to Mr. Romney, someone else wins there instead? Those are all tactical questions that his campaign staff will have to confront now that he is running for president.

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Today’s Times

-        Pay-as-you-go plans are not just limited to wireless phone contracts. House Republicans on Friday proposed a plan to finance the government through April 8, only days after passing a stop-gap measure extending the March 4 deadline. “We can’t keep on running the government based on two-week extensions,” President Obama said at a news conference. “We’ve got a war in Afghanistan going on. We’ve got a wide range of issues facing the country on a day-to-day basis.” The measure would cut $6 billion from federal spending over the three-week period by eliminating or reducing 25 programs, the Times’s Carl Hulse reports.

-        President Obama addressed boisterous critics and the pained public on Friday as he defended his energy plan at a White House news conference. To the critics who claim he has pushed prices up by clamping down on domestic oil production, Mr. Obama had this to say: “any notion that my administration has shut down oil production might make for a good political sound bite, but it doesn’t match up with reality.” Although he offered little immediate comfort to the public, he sought to reassure them that global oil supplies were adequate and domestic oil production in 2010 was the highest in several years, the Times’s John Broder reports.

-        Though absent, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, was on trial during Congressional hearings on radicalization in the American Islamic community. CAIR’s accusations from Republican lawmakers ran the radical gamut – they were accused of everything from stifling debate to being a full on terrorist organization.  A representative from the group was not invited to testify at the hearing, but submitted 30 pages of written testimony – including a list of dozens of CAIR statements dating back to 1997 condemning terrorist attacks around the world, The Times’s Scott Shane reports.

-        President Obama is defending the conditions in a Marine Corps jail for Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, despite comments from the top State Department spokesman calling the treatment “ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid.” After being accused of leaking classified government documents to WikiLeaks, Manning has been jailed and forced to sleep without clothing.  Mr. Obama said Friday that he had been assured that such measures were justified and for Manning’s own safety, the Times’s Scott Shane reports.

- The “Don’t Tread on Me” sentiment of the Revolutionary War era lives on as conservatives, libertarians and others stand up to defend their right to use the light bulbs of their choice. The Times’s Ed Wyatt reports on efforts to repeal a 2007 law, passed overwhelmingly by both houses of Congress and signed by President George W. Bush, that would impose strict new efficiency standards on light bulbs.

Around the Web

-        One of the many ripple effects of the massive earthquake in Japan was felt in Washington yesterday, as Democrats seized the opportunity to say “I told you so” to Republicans who proposed budget cuts to the National Weather Service. In February, House Republicans approved a budget resolution that would cut $410 million from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Senator John Rockefeller, Democrat from West Virginia, said that the catastrophe in Japan was “a cruel wake-up call” to anyone trying to cut the NOAA’s budget, Politico reports.

-        TwitterLeaks: Twitter will be forced to release the personal account information for three people associated with Wikileaks, a federal court judge ruled on Friday. Lawyers representing the three people argued for the court to overturn the order, Politico reports.  

Weekly Addresses

-        President Obama pleged to continue the work of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in this week’s Women’s History Month themed address. Eleanor Roosevelt’s leading the commission to look at the status of American women in 1961 inspired him to do the same with hopes of spurring action toward a more equal society. “It’s been almost fifty years since the Roosevelt commission published its findings – and there have been few similar efforts by the government in the decades that followed,” he said. “That’s why, last week, here at the White House, we released a new comprehensive report on the status of women in the spirit on the one that was released half a century ago.”  

-        Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, delivered her party’s weekly address focused primarly on rising gas prices. The goals, she outlined, would “protect America from international conflicts, create thousands of new jobs, reduce the budget deficit and help bring energy prices back down to earth.” Ms. Murkowski proposed ending the moratorium on new development in the Gulf of Mexico and parts of the Rocky Mountain West with hopes that American oil production would provide more jobs, money and security.

Happenings around Washington

- – On Saturday night, President Obama will attend his first Gridiron Dinner since moving into the White House. Besides remarks from Mr. Obama, the event at the Renaissance Hotel will feature entertainment by Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services.

-        The Embassy of the State of Kuwait will partner with the group No Greater Love on Sunday to host the 20th Annual Remembrance Ceremony. They will honor those who lost their lives in the 1991 Gulf War.

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One industry that does not appear to have been hit all that hard by the economic downturn: Federal lawmaking.

Even as the nation’s unemployment rate was reaching its highest levels in about a quarter-century, members of Congress saw their wealth collectively rise roughly 16 percent from 2008 to 2009, according to a new study from the Center for Responsive Politics.

The center’s analysis of lawmakers’ financial disclosures found that median wealth for members of the House and Senate grew to roughly $911,000 in 2009, after sitting at about $785,000 the previous year. It also found a small increase in the number of Congressional millionaires, with that figure now sitting at 261 – or close to half of all members of Congress.

More than 20 percent of those millionaires — 55 — had an average estimated wealth of at least $10 million. And moving up to the highest end, eight lawmakers — five Democrats and three Republicans — had an average wealth that stretches into nine figures.

Members of Congress report their assets in broad ranges, from which C.R.P. calculates an average estimated wealth. In its release on Wednesday, the center noted that lawmakers are not required to report all of their assets, including the worth of their personal residences.

The report also lays out which corporations attract the most congressional investors (with General Electric coming in No. 1) and calls for the disclosure reports, which are now submitted on paper, to be turned in electronically. It comes as lawmakers are going back and forth over whether to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for higher-income individuals and families.

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From Today’s Times:

Weekend Addresses:

Mr. Obama’s pre-recorded address comes as House Republicans announced that all members, including newly elected representatives, will vote next week to ban earmarks at the start of the next Congress, and called on Mr. Obama to veto any spending bill that contains earmarks.

Washington Daybook:

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