Rolling Stone magazine recently had a four page article describing in some detail the craziness ("batshit," Matt Taibbi said), hypocrisy, ignorance, religious zealotry and ruthlessness of the newest GOP presidential candidate, Michele Bachmann (R-MN). Not much is new there for those who have followed the antics of Bachmann, another sweetheart of the Tea Party wing of the Republican party.
Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and, as you consider the career and future presidential prospects of an incredible American phenomenon named Michele Bachmann, do one more thing. Don't laugh.
It may be the hardest thing you ever do, for Michele Bachmann is almost certainly the funniest thing that has ever happened to American presidential politics. Fans of obscure 1970s television may remember a short-lived children's show called Far Out Space Nuts, in which a pair of dimwitted NASA repairmen, one of whom is played by Bob (Gilligan) Denver, accidentally send themselves into space by pressing "launch" instead of "lunch" inside a capsule they were fixing at Cape Canaveral. This plot device roughly approximates the political and cultural mechanism that is sending Michele Bachmann hurtling in the direction of the Oval Office.
Bachmann is a religious zealot whose brain is a raging electrical storm of divine visions and paranoid delusions. She believes that the Chinese are plotting to replace the dollar bill, that light bulbs are killing our dogs and cats, and that God personally chose her to become both an IRS attorney who would spend years hounding taxpayers and a raging anti-tax Tea Party crusader against big government. She kicked off her unofficial presidential campaign in New Hampshire, by mistakenly declaring it the birthplace of the American Revolution. "It's your state that fired the shot that was heard around the world!" she gushed. "You are the state of Lexington and Concord, you started the battle for liberty right here in your backyard."
I said lunch, not launch! But don't laugh. Don't do it. And don't look her in the eyes; don't let her smile at you. Michele Bachmann, when she turns her head toward the cameras and brandishes her pearls and her ageless, unblemished neckline and her perfect suburban orthodontics in an attempt to reassure the unbeliever of her non-threateningness, is one of the scariest sights in the entire American cultural tableau. She's trying to look like June Cleaver, but she actually looks like the T2 skeleton posing for a passport photo. You will want to laugh, but don't, because the secret of Bachmann's success is that every time you laugh at her, she gets stronger.
And there is more. The colorful language notwithstanding, Taibbi's facts on Bachmann are mostly accurate. But the most important part of the cautionary diatribe comes at the end of the article when he warns that given the sentiments of a large part of the electorate, a Bachmann presidency is not unthinkable in the current political climate.
It could happen. Michele Bachmann has found the flaw in the American Death Star. She is a television camera's dream, a threat to do or say something insane at any time, the ultimate reality-show protagonist. She has brilliantly piloted a media system that is incapable of averting its eyes from a story, riding that attention to an easy conquest of an overeducated cultural elite from both parties that is far too full of itself to understand the price of its contemptuous laughter. All of those people out there aren't voting for Michele Bachmann. They're voting against us. And to them, it turns out, we suck enough to make anyone a contender.
The Dunning-Kruger effect has been evoked in reference to Sara Palin who has been making a fool of herself before half the nation, while at the same time dazzling the other half with her charm and down-to-earthliness since her debut on the national political theater in 2008. Taibbi rightly points out that Bachmann is a more earnest, determined and likely-to-succeed version of the Palin phenomenon.
Here's the difference between Bachmann and Palin: While Palin is clearly bored by the dreary, laborious aspects of campaigning and seems far more interested in gobbling up the ancillary benefits of reality-show celebrity, Bachmann is ruthlessly goal-oriented, a relentless worker who has the attention span to stay on message at all times. With a little imagination, you can even see a clear path for her to the nomination.
Palin may be intellectually lazy and no longer interested in being president or vice president. But her searing ambitions and love of the limelight have not dimmed. She may not wish to be the queen but I doubt that she is ready to relinquish her perceived role as the kingmaker. I don't think Palin is going to fade into the sunset just because another right wing Tea Party glam girl is the rising star, at least not before she demonstrates her adroitness with a sharp elbow. For example, Bachmann announced her presidential plans on Monday in her home state of Iowa. Coincidentally or not, Palin lands in Iowa on Tuesday ostensibly to promote her film biography. The fact that she may be there for more than a cinematic interlude is apparent from this report. Just as Palin had headed for New Hampshire on the same day as Mitt Romney (the front runner in NH) announced his candidacy there, she is following Bachmann to Iowa where the latter has just emerged as the winner of a straw poll of Iowa caucus goers and is tied with Romney among GOP voters. Get ready for Republican roller derby!
Great post! I see things are getting politically squalid enough for you to want to write about them! You've inspired a magnificent fantasy of SP and Bachmann, duking it out like Krystle and Alexis. Which will shoot skeet in a little red tartan, and unhorse the other? How I wish they bore one crucial resemblance to Thelma and Louise...
Posted by: Elatia Harris | June 28, 2011 at 12:43 AM
I think it is too simplistic to explain Palin and Bachmann merely by Dunning-Kruger although I have done so myself. Their totally unwarranted self esteem despite a lack of knowledge and understanding of complex matters or even history, arise not just from the confidence of the ignorant but also due to the homage the world pays to beautiful women. The Palin-Bachmann duo are used to people listening to their BS without protest because an attractive woman mouthing banalities is easy on the eye and ear when the brain pays scant attention to the content of their vehement but meaningless blather. Sad but true.
Michelle Bachmann's announcement on Monday contained the usual distortion of local history but she will think nothing of the bloopers as long as she knows God wants her to save America.
A fierce proponent of fiscal responsibility, Bachmann is now being quizzed by the press about her family's history of receiving large federal subsidies. Bachmann's breezily explained that she "personally" did not benefit from the governmental largesse.
Posted by: Ruchira | June 28, 2011 at 01:36 AM
It's true, Ruchira, they are both very pretty women, and men who like rabid and crazy mixed in with the MILF look must be extremely susceptible to them. Being fair to men, enormous numbers of them have also liked, respected and listened to Molly Ivins, Ann Richards, Eleanor Roosevelt, Hillary Clinton, Margaret Thatcher and many other unbeautiful women who have yet possessed "la charme du pouvoir." The difference? White male wing-nuts can run Palin and Bachmann while letting them think they make the decisions. While one may have issues with the politics or the integrity of some women also mentioned above, no one sees them as girly stooges for men in power behind the scenes. Or as Dunning-Krugerettes.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | June 28, 2011 at 08:11 PM
Look, for the really objectively radiantly gorgeous broad, search no further than Barack Obama. I'd love to see her out on the town in high heels and a low-cut satin dress! That gal's a looker, I tell ya! And power? She's got plenty to spare!
Posted by: Dean C. Rowan | June 29, 2011 at 11:11 AM
Oh, Obama is for sure a "radiantly gorgeous broad." Although he has disappointed me on Iraq, Afghanistan, energy innovation and much else, I still don't mind putting my fate in his hands for the time being because despite the dazzling looks, I don't doubt that his mental prowess matches the power of his office. I also sort of like the fact that Michele Bachmann doesn't think that he is quite the American Girl that she is.
Posted by: Ruchira | June 29, 2011 at 06:16 PM
Yes, but Michelle Bachmann is so...petty.
Posted by: Dean C. Rowan | June 29, 2011 at 06:52 PM
Interesting you point that out, Dean. His sheer gorgeousness helped get him elected -- it took down the Malcolm X note, made him appear less horribly intelligent than he is, and knocked out the black power vibe, replacing it with a sort of pharaonic metrosexuality. (Anyone remember Jaye Davidson from The Crying Game???)
My father knew LBJ before he entered presidential politics. He said the secret of his overwhelming effect on the men he won to his cause was that he flirted with them like a girl flirts. That he was a very tall, ambitious all-guy type deep in middle age only made that crazily effective. Because you couldn't accuse him of it -- too far out of you, if you did.
It may be the part-tranny, part-unhinged governess, part-dominatrix brew is infusing the natural good looks of Bachmann and Palin with a reek of downmarket power, the kind of gender-straddling, wiggy wolf-killing that, along with unusual fecundity, fascinates and compels.
I would not be too sure that they didn't all do serious time watching footage of David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, and Michael Jackson.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | June 30, 2011 at 10:22 AM
Now we're talking, Elatia. You've teased out a strand or two of the double-standard, although I question the assumption that there is such a quality as "natural good looks." Anybody remember last month's scandal over a study of the "objective" beauty of African American women? But even if the POTUS's sex appeal is in the pubic region of the beholder, it's clear that he(?), like his(?) wannabe female (so we assume) opponents, is all about bi-partisan engagement...if you get my drift.
Posted by: Dean C. Rowan | June 30, 2011 at 10:38 AM
Talk about eye candy--is Rick Perry the Palin-Bachmann male equivalent? I find him less than appealing, but I suppose some who are raised on the phony Marlboro Man stereotype of maleness may be dazzled. Limbaugh even commented on his great head of hair. For the rest of us--did we learn nothing from George W???
Nancy Hudson
Posted by: nancy hudson | June 30, 2011 at 02:04 PM
Nancy, did you see in today's Chronicle how Perry's puppet masters jerked his strings to defeat his Tea Party pleasing anti-immigration stance? I had to laugh.
On this blog, I never fail to refer to the governor as anything other than Rick "Goodhair" Perry.
Posted by: Ruchira | June 30, 2011 at 04:20 PM