From talking gay marriage to global warming to immigration and taxes, Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty, visisting Florida, talked to The Miami Herald about the issues of the campaign and his record as Minnesota governor. Here’s a partial transcript:

Q: You’re racking up endorsements from top Florida legislators, but stuck at the bottom of the polls here. Why?

Pawlenty: “The early days of campaigning in a state like Florida are retail…..Early polls don’t predict anything, ultimately. If they did, Hillary Clinton or Rudy Giuliani would be president today. National polls basically always misinterpret the final outcome or mis-predict the final outcome.”

Q: What do you think of the debt ceiling deal?

Pawlenty: “The debt ceiling agreement was really disappointing. They didn’t really fix the underlying structural problem of the country... I don’t think underwhelming or disappointing or mediocre or below average or flat-out pathetic is good enough for America anymore... We should have a president who’s leading the debate on these issues. And instead he’s hiding, he’s ducking, he’s bobbing, he’s weaving. You can’t even find him on the major financial issues of our day... Most of the things that they’ve now promised are in the future. They’re contingent upon future action. And guess what? A future president and a future Congress could undo or duck all of those as well…."

Q: What would you do with Social Security?

Pawlenty: “If you’re on the program now or anywhere near eligibility, you shouldn’t have your benefits impacted. But if you’re in the next generation, we’re telling you now with several decades of warning, we’re going to gradually raise the retirement age over time. If you’re lower income or middle income, you should still get your cost-of-living adjustment. But in the future, if you’re real wealthy, we’re going to have to slow that down or take it away.”

Q: Some of the increased spending happened in the Bush years, when two wars, a new Medicare prescription drug entitlement program and tax cuts were approved. Why not scale back all of that, including the tax cuts?

Pawlenty: “You have to look back at what got us into the mess. And, again, revenues kept up with the private economy. It’s the government spending that went way beyond that…When President Bush left office, the deficit was approximately $500 billion. It is now approximately now $1.5 trillion. In other words, President Obama has essentially tripled the deficit. To make matters worse, he promised in the first few months of his presidency that he would cut the deficit in half during his first term.”

Q: Part of the Obama deficit was the stimulus, but a number of Republican governors such as yourself both bashed it and took the money at the same time. How do you explain that?

Pawlenty: “There’s a lot of reasons for it. If the federal government is dumb enough to give it to us, we’ll be smart enough to take it. In Minnesota’s case, we are not a net taker of money from the federal government..”

Q: Do you think there’s man-made climate change?

Pawlenty: “Well, there’s definitely climate change. The more interesting question is how much is a result of natural causes and how much, if any, is attributable to human behavior. And that’s what the scientific dispute is about.”