A top strategist for Barack Obama's presidential campaign made a stop in Duluth on Tuesday to speak to the American Advertising Federation.

Steve Hildebrand shared his thoughts on what lead to Pres. Obama's successful road to the White House.  He spoke in-depth about the young vote, social networking and branding of a candidate. Hildebrand has worked on several presidential campaigns, including Clinton/Gore.

I was curious what his thoughts were on likely candidate for president, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. I asked him for a critique on how the governor is using social media to help or hurt him. Instead of talking analytically about Pawlenty's campaign strategy, Hildebrand gave what seemed like a partisan response of the governor. I guess I forgot it is possible Pawlenty could be Pres. Obama's next opponent someday in November 2012.

Here is what Hildebrand had to say about Pawlenty and republican strategies in general:

"Tim Pawlenty tends to get his ego fed a lot when he goes to Washington. If he’s smart enough, he should be careful about the kinds of offers that gets made, the incentives he gets to seeking the presidency and start listening to Minnesotans, what makes sense for Minnesotans, whether or not they think they’ve done a good job, has he hurt or helped health care. Pretty much everything points to the fact that he’s really hurt MinnesotaCare a lot. The education system is probably not moving forward the way Minnesota prides itself over, rightfully so. I think under his governorship he should have focused a lot more energy in building an even better education system in this state."

"[The republicans] are in a different situation than democrats are because they are in the opposition now. Democrats have control of both houses as well as a democratic president, so as the opposition party, they tend to use internet organizing and get people up with negative energy opposing Obama’s health care plan, opposing Obama’s climate change plan. A lot of the demonstrations that they did in Washington this last Saturday was pretty much all fed with negative energy and a lot of the organizing was over the internet. Republicans don’t just need to be the opposition party, they need to be the party that needs to come up with new ideas if they want to be the majority party again in this country."