Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been active in Republican circles for years — as chairman of the National Governors Association, as the head of the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign in Minnesota in 2004, as a vocal supporter of John McCain’s campaign this time around. It didn’t take long for people to start wondering if he was angling for a spot on McCain’s ticket, and rumors spread that he was a top contender for the GOP’s vice-presidential nomination. But the real sign Pawlenty might be interested in being McCain’s running mate came in a slightly subtler form late this spring: He cut his hair. Gone was the mullet he’d worn for years, even though Minnesota media outlets and political blogs mocked him for it. As Pawlenty hit the Sunday talk shows in May and June, he sported a trim new look. You might even call it vice-presidential. What has Republicans buzzing about Pawlenty, though, isn’t so much his hairstyle as his political style. He’s won election twice in a key battleground state that the GOP has long dreamed of taking back at the presidential level, and that will host the Republican convention in September. He’s young enough to balance out McCain’s age, but experienced enough after two terms in office to claim he’s been tested. Social conservatives like him; his pastor, the Rev. Leith Anderson, heads the National Association of Evangelicals. And week in and week out, as one of the McCain campaign’s most visible surrogates on cable news, Pawlenty is proving he has no …