WYTHEVILLE, Va. – Vice President Joe Biden sought Tuesday evening to clarify language he used earlier in the day, saying his charge that the Republican ticket's banking policies would "put you all back in chains" was merely a reference to the GOP's own rhetoric about the "unshackling" of economic forces.

Biden made the comment, which sparked immediate controversy, in the southern Virginia town of Danville Tuesday morning.

Biden tells audience GOP, banks would put them ‘back in chains’

Noting that both Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP vice presidential pick, and John Boehner, speaker of the House, have both proposed “unshackling” the American economy, Biden said those were the type of proposals that led to the financial crisis. 

"The last time these guys unshackled the economy, to use their term, they put the middle class in shackles," Biden told his audience in Wytheville, Va.  "That’s how we got where we are."

Later conceding that he used the more charged verb "unchain" rather than "unshackle" in his earlier remarks – particularly because his audience in Danville, Va. included hundreds of African Americans --  Biden still took aim at Romney aides who called his statement "outrageous."

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in a statement earlier today that Biden's reference to GOP financial policies that would put Americans "in chains" was one that "reached a new low."

But Biden said in Wytheville that the metaphor belonged to the Ryan-Romney faction of the GOP itself. 

"I’m using their own words!" Biden protested.

"I got a message for them," he added. "If you want to know want to know what’s outrageous, it’s their policies, and the effects of their policies on middle class America. That’s what’s outrageous."

Carrie Dann / NBC

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty on Saturday addresses Young Republicans at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics.

MANCHESTER, NH -- Three video cameras and about 50 people were on hand Saturday morning to see Tim Pawlenty perform a familiar but painful role as the GOP's most dutiful good soldier. 

Pawlenty, who until Friday was widely believed to be a finalist for Mitt Romney's vice presidential selection, appeared as scheduled at a small breakfast speech just hours after Romney instead unveiled Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., as his running mate before an audience of thousands in Norfolk, Va. 

Calling Ryan "a great bold leader," Pawlenty urged the group of Young Republicans at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics to help the swing state turn red in November under the Romney-Ryan banner.

"They're going to be a great team for America as president and vice president," he said of the newly announced ticket. 

The former Minnesota governor, who was attending four public events in the state Saturday, told reporters that he received a call on Monday night from Gov. Romney informing him that he would not be the nominee's choice for VP. 

"We had a great discussion about it" at that time, Pawlenty said. "So I've known for about a week." 

Asked if he would continue to be an active surrogate for Romney, he referenced his work in the private sector but said he'll continue to advocate on the ticket's behalf "as I can." 

"It depends on the week," he said. "I kind of have other things I have to do too, but I am absolutely committed to doing all that I can to help Gov. Romney and Congressman Ryan win this election." 

In his remarks, the famously self-deprecating former governor did not reference his VP audition, but he poked fun at his short-lived GOP primary campaign, which brought him to the Granite State about a dozen times in 2010 and 2011. 

He even compared his run to the brief nuptials of Kim Kardashian and Minnesota native Kris Humphries. 

"I go around Minnesota and say don't feel sorry for Kris Humphries," he said. "His marriage lasted longer than my entire presidential campaign!"

After speaking, Pawlenty stood patiently on stage as organizers conducted a lengthy presentation of local awards. He looked on as a young GOP awardee gushed about Ryan as "the first great leader of our generation."  

The governor and his wife shook hands with supporters and local politicians before and after the event, as some lamented to him that he had been passed over for the job. 

One regretful backer's consolation: "It's like being the other woman, at least it's something." 

"Well," Pawlenty replied, laughing loudly. "I hadn't thought about that."

Related:

Romney picks Ryan as running mate

Pawlenty: 'I'm not disappointed'

PORTAGE, Mich. -- It's possible that Tim Pawlenty is days from stepping onto a stage before thousands of cheering supporters as Mitt Romney's newly-minted running mate. But you wouldn't know it from his swing through central Michigan on Wednesday, where the former governor appeared at nondescript campaign offices and addressed just dozens of supporters as they snacked on cookies and lemonade. 

"Mitt Romney didn't spend his entire life in government," Pawlenty said to a small group of GOP devotees in Jackson. "He knows how to get jobs going."

Even after dutifully delivering laugh lines – like calling the president "all foam and no beer" – Pawlenty didn't escape "veep" speculation from his audience, with one supporter in Jackson asking him if he'll return to the state as vice president. 

"I've been back to Michigan a fair amount," he demurred. "But as to the vice presidential thing, we'll know soon enough." 

Devoid of the camera platforms and elaborate sound systems typically on hand for political celebrities' events, Pawlenty's appearances showed him to be anything but a campaign diva. When the fold-up table he was supposed to sit behind in Portage was in the wrong place, he helped to carry it to a more suitable spot. When a portable microphone in Jackson proved too loud for backers' ears, he ditched it over the complaints of reporters eager to record his every word. 

"We don't want them to get the sound!" he joked to the crowd. 

The trip, which involved an early morning flight to the Great Lake State and several hours of trekking in an SUV driven by an aide, showed Pawlenty's talents as an approachable and disciplined pol even as national reporters dogged him with questions about the vice presidential selection process. 

Is he stopping by Romney's Boston headquarters on his way to his scheduled New Hampshire events this weekend?

"I'm flying into Boston and then traveling immediately up to New Hampshire to start [my] schedule."

Will he be meeting VP selection guru Beth Myers?

"We have a policy, the campaign just doesn't talk about the vice presidential vetting process." 

How's the process going?  

He rattled off the names of GOP up-and-comers, scattering in other possible Romney running mates including women and minorities breathing new life into the GOP: Susanna Martinez, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, Nikki Haley, Bob McDonnell, Chris Christie, Rob Portman and Paul Ryan.  

"And David Petraeus," he added, perhaps a sly nod to a flurry of speculation that surrounded a now-debunked story on the Drudge Report that the CIA director was in the running for the job. 

Slideshow: The public life of Tim Pawlenty

Jim Cole / AP

Launch slideshow

Widely regarded as one of the Romney campaign's most loyal surrogates, Pawlenty insisted Wednesday that there's no job title that motivates his determined campaigning on behalf of a man he once fought against for the GOP nod. 

"The objective here isn't about a position or about some title for any of the candidates or the people trying to help. We are trying to get the country back on the right track," he said. "For me that's meant doing things like this as a volunteer where I can go out and speak on Gov. Romney's behalf in places where he can't be." 

And many of those places aren't glitzy, politically or economically. In past years, Jackson has suffered a poverty rate twice that of Michigan as a whole. The Kalamazoo area clocked in for an Obama win of 20 points in 2008. 

As Pawlenty wrapped up a brief stop at a strip-mall campaign office in Portage, his possible second-in-command competitor Sen. Rob Portman was wrapping up an (albeit smaller) event outside of Mile High Stadium in hotly-contested Colorado. 

Still, the former governor of Minnesota has one psychological advantage that possible running mates Portman and Paul Ryan lack -- the experience of going through the lengthy vetting process only to be greeted with a "thanks but no thanks." 

"In 2008, I was on some speculators' list as John McCain's selection for VP," he told reporters. "It's an honor to be considered. It's an honor for anyone to be considered, but also it has some deja vu qualities since I've been through it before." 

As speculation abounds about Mitt Romney's selection for a running mate, the Obama campaign is revving the engines to ensure its supporters in the home states of the possible picks are ready to dish some local dirt.

In emails to supporters in Ohio, Florida, and Minnesota, Obama for America invites critics of hometown pols Sen. Rob Portman, Sen. Marco Rubio, and former Gov. Tim Pawlenty to "share what you think Americans need to know about" the could-be vice presidential candidates.

An email to Obama for America's Minnesota supporters calls　Pawlenty "our former governor and 'Obamneycare' critic" and asks if the onetime presidential candidate "will really be Mitt Romney's running mate."

"Most Americans don't know Tim Pawlenty," the email reads. "But as a Minnesotan, you do -- and the truth is painful for the middle-class families who lived under his leadership. Like Romney, Pawlenty proved that when he's in charge, fees and taxes go up, job creation goes down, transparency gets worse, and women's rights are threatened."

The message: Those who know the talked-about running mates need to spread the word to a nation that doesn't know much about the "disaster" each would be as Romney's partner in the White House.

An email to Floridians dumps a sampling of opposition research on Rubio: "In the Florida State House, Rubio balanced the budget by sticking it to the middle class. And in the Senate, Rubio's led the way on almost every extreme position Mitt Romney has embraced. If chosen as Romney's VP, we can count on Rubio to lead us right back to the failed economic policies of the past. Remember -- this is the guy who called George W. Bush a ‘fantastic’ president."

A similar message was sent to Ohio Obama backers about Sen. Rob Portman: "The most damning pieces of his record involve choices he made as a senior member of the Bush-Cheney administration and conservative congressman, the consequences of which still reverberate on a national scale."

The message continued: "As one of the architects of the top-down Bush budget, Portman practically invented the policies that punished middle-class families while exploding the deficit, and crashing our economy."

Each email contains a link to a clearinghouse site where participants can, for example, "share what you think the rest of the country should know about what Rubio's really done in Florida -- the good, bad, and ugly -- and why he'd be a disaster as our next vice president."

The grassroots communication effort is similar to one launched by the Obama campaign during the GOP primaries.

So far, none of the other possible picks - like Wisconsin's Paul Ryan, Louisiana's Bobby Jindal, or New Jersey's Chris Christie - have received the same treatment. But as the buzz picks up, more such efforts could be on the way.

NBC's Andrew Rafferty contributed to this report.

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio -- Vice presidential prospect Tim Pawlenty won't talk about the vice presidential vetting process, but he will tell you about his favorite beers. 

Putting in another solid day of swing-state advocacy on behalf of Mitt Romney, the former Minnesota governor pumped up the GOP nominee's small government policies, sampled local ice cream and won laughs from supporters when he deployed some recently-unveiled stump speech jokes at the president's expense. 

"I don't know about you, but I enjoy a cold beer once in a while," he said at Dublin Pub in Dayton, Ohio, listing some of the available sudsy brands. "I know you probably have some Guinness here, and some Smithwick’s, and some Edmund Fitzgerald, who knows what else? Miller and Budweiser and all kinds of other stuff."

Imagining the unsatisfying scenario of being served a foamy pint of beer, Pawlenty delivered the punch line: "Barack Obama is all foam and no beer. And you can't live on the foam. His speeches are his foam." 

That's an analogy that Pawlenty says "most Americans can relate to." 

"I think most people can relate to the notion that if you want a cold beer you want the beer, you don't want the foam," he told NBC News after an appearance in Springfield. "That sort of gets in the way of the beer and it's not the substance of what you're hoping for. And that's kind of like President Obama's presidency. It's all speeches, it's all words, it's all fancy rhetoric but the results haven't been there." 

His personal favorites? Minnesota-brewed Grain Belt Nordeast and Summit Extra Pale Ale, he said. 

Two of the three men known to be on the general election ticket do not drink alcohol; neither Vice President Joe Biden nor Mitt Romney partake. 

Pawlenty, wearing an untucked casual blue shirt and jeans, offered a fierce defense of the GOP nominee's record both on the stump and in an interview. 

Asked about criticism of Romney's foreign trip, which has been marked by controversy over his public skepticism about London's preparedness for the 2012 London Games, Pawlenty dismissed the kerfuffle as "overblown." 

"I think the criticism of his comments in London were way overblown and way overstated and I think the rest of the trip has gone well," he said. 

While Romney is the frequent butt of jokes for his sometimes robotic-seeming interactions with strangers, his Minnesotan surrogate chatted easily with customers and employees when he stopped at Young's Jersey Dairy in Yellow Springs. There, Pawlenty chatted with local elected officials - including Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine - and posed with children, even coaching them to crown him with "bunny ears." 

And he showed the only hint of a diversion from his much-discussed "Minnesota Nice" aura when pausing for a photo with young workers at the ice cream parlor. 

"Cross your arms!" he instructed them after one smiling snapshot. Demonstrating a grimace and a tough guy look, he added, "Now, look angry!"

RALEIGH, NC -- What's a folksy, blue-collar pitch from a Midwestern pol without a good beer analogy?

Appearing at a GOP Victory office opening in swing state North Carolina, Tim Pawlenty on Saturday compared the President Barack Obama's lofty rhetoric of hope and change to the unsatisfying byproduct of a poor-quality keg of an adult beverage.

"We got a problem because we've got a president who's all foam and no beer," declared the former Minnesota governor and top GOP VP pick.

The crowd of about 300 supporters roared.

"I don't know about you but I'm tired of hearing these teleprompter speeches and no results!" he said. "You know his big fancy speeches from four years ago; those speeches, those words don't put gas in our cars do they? And his teleprompter speeches don't pay the mortgage do they?"

Pawlenty, who hours before had talked policy details at a roundtable and given young hockey fans tips on the skating rink, was visibly energized and almost raspy-voiced as he berated the president on behalf of the presumptive GOP nominee, who remains abroad this weekend.

Mitt Romney, a Mormon, does not drink alcohol

"We need to grow this economy and quit kicking our entrepreneurs and small business leaders like President Obama does in the shins every day," he said.

Numerous vice presidential prospects, including Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio and Gov. Bobby Jindalof Louisiana, are stumping for Romney over the coming days. Pawlenty told reporters after his Raleigh appearance that he doesn't see this weekend as an audition for the job.

"I've been out doing this sort of thing since last fall and I get a call once in a while from the campaign saying, 'hey, do you have any free time next week to go be a surrogate?' " he said. "This is consistent with that pattern so it's really no different than what I've been doing for the campaign since last fall."

He declined to speak further about the vetting process, joking that he's been busy around the house.

"I've been taking care of yard work, doing my other work, trying to deal with family matters," he said.

"And trying to get the garage cleaned up. My garage is a mess."

Earlier: Pawlenty calls officials' thumbs down on Chick-Fil-A 'chilling, jaw-dropping'