WASHINGTON — They came, they saw, but they didn’t land.

It turns out that Sunday’s congressional tour of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), including Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann, ran into some typical North Slope weather. They had to circle around in the air instead of touching down.

“Fog made it impossible,” said Bruce Woods, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman in Anchorage. “That’s not unusual.”

The 11-member delegation, led by House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio, made it to Prudhoe Bay, but had to be content with an aerial tour of ANWR’s foggy coastal plain.

The experience did not douse Bachmann’s enthusiasm for drilling for oil in ANWR, which she laid out in a conference call with Minnesota reporters on Tuesday.

“Oil production and the environmental concerns with the wildlife and keeping the tundra area pure and clean, those are not mutually exclusive, they are very compatible,” Bachmann said.

The group saw the most wildlife, Bachmann said, right at “Mile Marker Zero” in Prudhoe Bay. It was a herd of caribou clustered around a pipeline.

Of the subsequent “two hour visual” of the National Petroleum Reserve and ANWR, she said, “the tundra looks exactly the same. The terrain looks the same.”

Opponents of drilling decried the trip as a sham. “They saw nothing,” said longtime oil industry critic Chuck Hamel. “What a wasted trip.”

But Stephen Miller, Bachmann’s spokesman, said the rough weather conditions bolster the arguments for drilling: “These extreme conditions, present even in the best months of summer, are evidence of the core point members learned firsthand from tours and briefings during the trip: ANWR’s 10-02 (proposed drilling area) coastal region is a remote and desolate site.”

We recently had an illuminating conversation with Joel Goldstein, a professor at St. Louis University School of Law. He is the author of “The Modern American Vice Presidency:The Transformation of a Political Institution” (Princeton University Press 1982) and has written widely on the vice presidency, has consulted on vice presidential selection and is frequently interviewed on the subject. He is currently writing a new book on the vice presidency as it has developed over the past 30 years.

You get the picture. The guy knows the vice presidency.

As the vetting process continues and Minnesota, in particular, remains focused on whether Gov. Tim Pawlenty might be named as Republican John McCain’s running mate, Goldstein’s thoughts are worth exploring:

-Republicans tend to operate a little more below the radar screen than the Democrats when it comes to whom and when they vet. Seven people were openly interviewed in 1976 by Democratic presidential nominee Jimmy Carter, with a press conference following the interviews. In 1984, Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale invited potential running mates to his home.

-Prospective veep candidates are asked to box up years of tax returns, medical records, and campaign reports.

-In 1984, then-San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein, who was Mondale’s first choice for running mate, and her husband had a complicated financial picture. Toward the end, the Mondale campaign switched and vetted Geraldine Ferraro and her husband. Ironically, questions about Ferraro’s husband’s real estate dealings dogged her throughout the campaign.

-In 1992, Al Gore pulled together reams of documents and sent them to Bill Clinton’s people. Gore met Clinton’s people in Washington and Nashville.

-If the McCain people are really interested in Pawlenty, at some point they will want to talk to his accountant. They’d also want to know if there are any health issues. In Mondale’s case, operatives for Carter actually talked to Mondale’s doctor because Mondale was taking medication for high blood pressure.

-With a senator or U.S. representative, you are likely to look at voting records. With a governor you are more likely to look at things that have gone wrong. In Pawlenty’s case, that might include the I-35W bridge disaster. These are “potential Willie Horton issues,” as Goldstein called them.

-Timing will be interesting, particularly since the Republican National Convention will be held after the Democrats convene; second, since both conventions will be relatively late; and because the Summer Olympics in China will be occupying much of the public’s attention

“From McCain’s standpoint,” said Goldstein, “he’s got so many different directions that he could go in, so many different needs to address. Does he need to make a play for the base? If [Democratic candidate Barack] Obama picks somebody and it looks like the women’s vote isn’t coming around to him, does McCain think about a demographic play? Does he try and emphasize the fact that he’s a maverick? Does he try and emphasize the fact that he’s a conservative? I don’t see that there is any one person out there that is that much more of a compelling pick than anyone else.”

-Excluding incumbent veeps who were asked to run again (Mondale, Bush, Quayle, Gore, Cheney), the earliest a nominee picked a running mate was when John Kerry picked John Edwards 20 days before the 2004 Democratic convention.

-Governors aren’t often picked as running mates these days. In the past 60 years, Maryland’s Spiro Agnew (Richard Nixon) and California’s Earl Warren (Thomas Dewey) have been the only two governors chosen to run as vice president.

“It’s usually people who have some sort of plausible presidential background,” said Goldstein. “If they ask him who is the prime minister of Portugal is he going to know?”

The answer, of course, is Jose Socrates.

U.S. Senate candidate Jack Uldrich unveiled his first campaign ad on his website today, called “Reverse Your Thinking.”

It’s long, but if you’re interested in how words are used, stay with it through the end. It is a take off of a video on YouTube called Lost Generation.

In announcing that he would not seek re-election, eight-term Big Lake Republican Mark Olson had some interesting things to say about the impact a domestic assault conviction had on his decision. Contrary to what might be conventional wisdom with that sort of cloud hanging over your head, Olson said the experience almost convinced him that he needed to run again. How that would have played in his Sherburne County district, especially with former Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer the endorsed Republican candidate, is now the great hypothetical.

As usual, Olson did not fail to confound when he was asked about his court case and his political career:

I don’t want to use my case because my case has been exploited enough. I wanted people to understand that being poltically afraid of something because it’s not popular is very problematic for good policy. In all the years I’ve been here there’s no a single area that comes close to the area of family law for how serious the problems are, how destructive the outcomes can be, how destructive the government’s response to the problem can be and how oppressive it is to the people. That is the very hardest part about my saying no. I feel like I’m betraying every person who has contacted me. I feel like I was letting them down because this was a great opportnuty to change policy for the good for families. I found absolutely nothing positive about this system about responding to these situations.

If raising money is a qualification for the vice presidency, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty may have has helped his chances by collecting more than $500,000 for Ariz. Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president.

Pawlenty, an early supporter and national co-chairman for McCain’s campaign, is the only governor often mentioned as a potential VP pick who shows up in the ranks of top McCain “bundlers” — that is, those listed as having raised more than a half-million dollars.

The list, updated Tuesday on McCain’s website, was welcomed by the Center for Responsive Politics and other campaign watchdog groups, who have pressed both McCain and Democrat Barack Obama to make their online rosters of big donors more transparent.

The $500,000-plus category is a new one for the McCain camp. It used to max out at $100,000-plus. Obama’s top bundler tier maxes out at $200,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which is holding out for a $1 million-plus disclosure category.

Another top prospect in the GOP veepstakes is former Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fiorina, who is listed in the $100,000-250,000 range. Another name is significant for its absence among top McCain bundlers: Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who is on many pundits’ short-lists of potential McCain running mates.

One of the most interesting reactions to former Gov. Jesse Ventura’s decision not to run for the Senate came last night from something called the American Mustache Institute, apparently (according to its website) a group of mustachioed fellows based in St. Louis. It holds an annual ‘Stache Bash to raise awareness of mustache discrimination and “support mustached Americans,” as well as raise money for a baseball league for disabled kids.

Anyway, AMI executive director Aaron Perlut expressed keen disappointment that Jesse won’t be on the campaign trail this year.

“As a former mustached American who has acted in such Oscar-worthy scripted dramas as Predator, Conan the Barbarian and the World Wide Wrestling Federation,” Perlut said, “we were strongly inclined to favor his candidacy, especially in a race against a comedian and Norm Coleman, who was apparently named for a character on ‘Cheers.’ ”

But Perlut said they would not have endorsed him “until he grew back his delicious mustache.” Lest we forget, Jesse’s mustache was part of the classic look he adopted as governor from 1999 to 2003, along with his shaved head, and is on display in his official state portrait at the State Capitol. His latest look, long black hair sans mustache, reminds one more of Benjamin Franklin, as one of my colleagues notes today in her column.

The AMI is inviting Jesse to discuss with them an Equal Rights Amendment for mustached Americans and a federal holiday for Burt Reynolds’ birthday — probably over Buds somewhere in the Gateway City, I’m guessing.

Last Sunday, Star Tribune colleague Pat Doyle and I documented how Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s office has deleted a large number of its inner offce communications and has been less forthcoming in providing documents to the Minnesota Historical Society for archival purposes than his predecessor.

In reporting the story, I was confronted by the Pawlenty administration’s position on providing public records through the state’s Data Practices Act. I asked to review e-mails from Chief of Staff Matt Kramer and Deputy Chief of Staff Bob Schroeder. After looking at the e-mails, I asked the office to copy 115 documents. I agreed to pay the costs. In a previous request, I had 66 copies made and the bill came to $16.50. The cost when the copying was done for my latest request: a whopping $299.43.

Why the substantial increase? The office cited a portion of state law (13.03 sub 3.C) that allows a government agency to charge actual costs if more than 100 pages are requested. If 100 or fewer pages are requested, they are limited to charging $.25 per page. To be clear, it gives the government agency THE DISCRETION to charge the higher fee. Given the choice, Pawlenty’s office let the meter run, all because of 16 extra pages. For five hours work, the governor’s office charged $294.83 in employee search and copying time (at $53.64 an hour and $26.63 respectively).

Perhaps no one cares if Pawlenty’s office charges the Star Tribune the most it can to provide public records. But these are your public records. It may be more unusual for regular citizens to seek information from their government than newspaper reporters snooping around, but it is no less a fundamental right for you to be able to monitor how your government works … or doesn’t work … and not to be charged exorbitantly for it. In today’s electronic age, in which e-mails can be recovered with the simple push of a button, it shouldn’t be prohibitively expensive to retrieve documents.

Public access advocate Rich Neumeister, who follows these things closer than any citizen should, has some basic advice for anyone caught in the price war for Minnesota public records: only request 99 copies or buy yourself an inexpensive scanner. The government cannot charge you for making your own copies.

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The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, who has always been very high on Gov. Tim Pawlenty as a possible vice presidential pick, reports on the vetting process starting for the Obama campaign. A reference to McCain’s efforts is tucked in the bottom.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty just can’t seem to resist another road trip these days.
On Tuesday he’s back in Washington D.C. to take part in the National Infrastructure Advisory Council Cyber Security and Mandatory Ethics briefing. The briefing will be at Secret Service Headquarters on 950 H. Street Northwest (should they be giving that address out?).
It is, of course, secret and so is closed to the press.

The Miami Herald reported over the weekend on the behind-the-scene effort under way by Republican Florida Gov. Charlie Crist to position himself as a possible candidate for the vice presidency.

Among the points made in the story is that it is not uncommon for veep contenders to set things up to make major policy speeches, court national media types with dozens of interviews, and to appear on the Meet the Presses and Late Editions of the cable world to bolster and burnish their images.

In Crist’s case, even the announcement of his engagement has become international news, apparently to assuage blogosphere rumors about his, ummm, sexuality.

Here in Minnesota, Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty has said repeatedly that no one from the campaign of presumptive Republican nominee John McCain has has asked his office or anyone that he knows of for documents or other information that might lead one to conclude that Pawlenty is being vetted for the vice presidency. In the Herald story, Crist was being a little more coy, saying last week that the McCain campaign “probably” asked people in his office to say what they know about the governor but that Crist didn’t know who or what the questions were.