Zombie Reagan with pizzazz

There's an advantage to having lived through the 1979 build-up to the Republican nomination, when the unthinkable and laughable -- Reagan as the nominee for President? "O RLY," we would have said then had LOLspeak already been invented -- came true. No one who was paying attention to Reagan in 1979 is laughing at Bachmann now. She is the "Zombie Reagan" that Republicans are looking for -- not because she's as good of an actor, but because she speaks with the same sort of assured fervor -- and she doesn't care when she makes what others term a mistake.

Given that she's running on a campaign of magical fantasy wish-fulfillment at a time when that is likely to be pretty damn popular, we have to take her seriously. She is everything that the desiccated, thirty-two-faced, elitist, removed, religiously incorrect Mitt Romney is not -- and that is why she will be the nominee. She's Mike Huckabee crossed with Mary Tyler Moore. She combines every single major type of Republicanism out there -- religious extremism, free market evangelism, paranoid American exceptionalism, and anti-government goofballery -- into one package, except for one thing: she doesn't really appear to be corrupt.

We have to define her before she does it for herself. The media will lap up the "first woman candidate nominated for President" angle. Indeed, unlike previous contestants Hillary Clinton and Liddy Dole, her political success doesn't derive from a famous husband (not that Hillary didn't deserve it, but she wouldn't have had it) and she's not a marble-mouthed grifter like La Palin.

The only reasons that she could not be a serious threat is that so many of the things she has to say are -- not crazy, exactly, but loopy. Paranoid, irresponsible, irrational -- embarrassing to anyone who thinks that accuracy and responsibility is important. Yet she doesn't seem like she is bullshitting, as Bush did, or trying to evade the teacher's questions with generalities and huffpuffery, as Palin does. Every time she speaks, she seems like she believes it -- and when she has to admit she was wrong, she forgives herself sincerely.

We have to do the almost impossible with Bachmann: get the people of the country -- who care less and less about politics and luxuriate in the continually running waters of false equivalency, thinking that "oh, they're all just as bad as the others" -- to understand that this woman is completely dangerous, as in end of the world dangerous.

And we have every possibility of blowing it -- as we did in 1980 with Ronald Reagan.

Framing her, framing ourselves

We are capable of losing the chance to frame Bachmann for people -- of allowing her to just be a typical Republican linguistic lovable goof like Eisenhower (yes, he was a malaprop generator, despite being brilliant), Ford, Reagan, Poppy Bush and Lesser Bush.

Republicans don't demand that their candidates avoid cringeworthy statements, the way that Democrats do. They don't require their leaders to have the brains of FDR, JFK (or at least Sorenson), LBJ, Carter, Clinton, and either Hillary or Obama. Making an error here or there is just a mark of passion -- and it's the critics who deserve disdain.

Let's look at Jed's largely powerful series of attacks on Bachmann to give the lie to the claim she made today, that she is "a substantive, serious person." For reasons that will become obvious, I'll start from the bottom.

Bachmann believes the school lunch program is unconstitutional. Yes, that's weird. That's a good one. People will intuit that she must be extreme.

Bachmann believes that the Census could be used to put Americans in concentration camps That's weird, but not necessarily self-evidently weird. At its root, it's an attack on big government and a defense of privacy. We know a lot of things here on this site about government intrusiveness and misbehavior that people in general would not believe are true. I think this one needs more explanation.

Bachmann believes swine flu is an Obama conspiracy to take over America Sounds weird. But I'll bet that she'd quickly (and skillfully) retreat to a position of Administration policy regarding the swine flu vaccine is simply an example of how the government could take away our civil rights. She's not dumb. And that argument may not be quite so easily lampooned away.

Bachmann believes Congress should have investigated whether Barack Obama is anti-American Sure seems absurd! And yet, the question is what she means by "anti-American." Does she merely mean -- and, again, this fallback position remains open to her -- he fails to honor cherished American values? Well, do you think that about the Supreme Court majority and the Republican leaders in Congress and the claque of awful new Governors in the Midwest and Florida? If so, then don't think that this evidence for her lack of "seriousness" unpacks itself.

Bachmann believes teachers are indoctrinating kids to become gay Oh, that chestnut again! But let me ask you this: do you want teachers to socialize children so that, if they are gay by nature, they will feel free to express it rather than suppress it? In that case, then what you want -- and what I want -- may not seem that different to the low-information voter from what she claims. If my daughters or grandchildren turn out to be gay, I want them to be able to be that, safely and proudly. Them being who they are is more important to me than their being straight. Bachmann doesn't agree with that -- and her position is not as absurdly unpopular as we'd like. So: does this convince onlookers that she's not "serious"?

Bachmann believes that Iran is turning Iraq into a secret terror training camp Well, I believe that one outcome of the Iraq War -- one that was both predictable and predicted and a good reason not to start the war in the first place -- is that the most likely long-term outcome was that Iran's influence in the country would be greatly strengthened. And so it has. So are we arguing with her about whether that influence is being used for "secret training camps"? Not much of an issue, not much of a stupidity -- even given its likelihood of being wrong.

Bachmann believes the minimum wage is a terrible thing Great! Hammer that one! But bear in mind that this is a mainstream Republican position, not one that emanates from Bedlam (or Wasilla.)

Bachmann believes evolution is a hoax and creationism should be taught in schools Same as above. It's nutty, but it's Republican mainstream nutty and the public is (unfortunately) not likely to get exercised over it.

So far, this has been a mild critique. That is about to change.

Bachmann went to law school at Oral Roberts University Stop it. Just STOP IT. Stop with the elitism. I know wonderful lawyers who have come from worse-ranked schools. Take this line of attack and lose the bulk of the population that didn't get to go to top universities and graduate/professional schools. Stop. It.

Bachmann believes Concord and Lexinginton were battles in New Hampshire No, she held the commonly held belief (from my memories of teaching Poli Sci) that "Concord" would refer to the relatively large and well-known city in New Hampshire rather than the generally unknown one in Massachusetts. Every time you attack her for getting something like this wrong, you invite people to ask "Could I have made that mistake?" And if the answer is yes, what follows is: "Who do I like more, the person who made the mistake or the person who made a big deal out of it?"

Yes, Sarah Palin says some things that are complete howlers -- and most everyone who isn't invested in her knows it. Bachmann is not Palin.

Bachmann believes John Quincy Adams was a Founding Father even though he was nine when the Declaration of Independence was signed? My first reaction to this is: "who gives a damn?" Frankly, it probably makes about as much sense to class J.Q. Adams with James Monroe (a Founding Father who crossed the Delaware with Washington) as with Andrew Jackson. If I corrected a student for calling JQA a "Founding Father" it would be a technical correction, not #2 on a list of statements that proved he or she was stupid. But, perhaps even worse, look at that example. Adams was 9 in 1776. He was 16 when the war was won in 1783 -- old enough to fight. But, admittedly, he wasn't fighting. What was he doing instead?

Much of Adams' youth was spent accompanying his father overseas. John Adams served as an American envoy to France from 1778 until 1779 and to the Netherlands from 1780 until 1782, and the younger Adams accompanied his father on these journeys. Adams acquired an education at institutions such as Leiden University. For nearly three years, at the age of 14, he accompanied Francis Dana as a secretary on a mission to St. Petersburg, Russia, to obtain recognition of the new United States.

Part of these missions was convincing the rest of the world -- particularly the French and Dutch financiers -- that the American colonists were not bumpkins, but bright, civilized, and worth of respect equal to true Europeans. What the brilliant young JQA was doing there was not pointless (or they wouldn't have sent him -- certainly not with Dana.) Does that make him a Founding Father, despite his great knowledge at the time of the Revolution from his father's letters and the likelihood that he discussed them with him? Maybe not -- but it's not an absurd way to classify him -- so let's not treat it as if she called Abraham Lincoln one (as Palin either did or probably would.)

Bachmann can't tell John Wayne from John Wayne Gacy It's the Big Kahuna! The Proof of Stoopid! Can she really not tell an actor apart from a serial killer? Well ... no. But she did mix them up, right? Well ... maybe. And, if so, fairly innocently and benignly.

Here: read Dave Weigel about it:

Ah, I'm glad I was otherwise occupied when everyone decided to pile on Michele Bachmann for saying John Wayne -- Marion Robert Morrison to his parents -- was from Waterloo, Iowa. Serial killer John Wayne Gacy moved there and committed some crimes there (though he did much of his killing in Illinois.) Wayne wasn't. But Alex Burns points out that Marion Morrison's parents met in Waterloo, and I consulted another Wayne bio, The Man Behind the Myth (2005), which says the same. Just a few years after Clyde [Morrison's] birth in 1884, his family moved to Iowa where he grew up and served an apprenticeship as a pharmacist in Waterloo. It was there that he met Molly, who worked as a telephone operator. Look: I'm not from a small town, but I'm from a pretty anonymous place (Wilmington, Delaware), and I know that when you've got a tenuous local connection to a celebrity, you flaunt it. Bachmann's problem, if we even want to call it that, is that she's been hopelessly defined as a gaffe-machine who flubs silly things. But she didn't pull this out of thin air! Waterloo has more of a claim on John Wayne than most other towns in America, excepting Winterset, Iowa and Los Angeles.

OK, having read that, do you really think that Bachmann's comment -- "John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That's the kind of spirit that I have, too." -- shows that she mixed up John Wayne and John Wayne Gacy? Do you want to defend the thesis that she was claiming to have John Wayne Gacy's spirit? Or do you feel a little, oh, abashed at having made the claim so strongly, and think perhaps that it shouldn't have been #1 on the list of things "proving" that Bachmann is not "serious."

And it gets worse, because Bachmann, of course, is not stupid, and can grapple just fine with elitists who look down on her homey Christian self. How did Bachmann respond today?

“The main point that I was making are the sensibilities of John Wayne, which is patriotism, love of country standing up for our nation. That positive enthusiasm is what America’s all about, and that’s of course my main point.”

Pardon me, but she wins this round -- and by a large margin.

A plea, and yes I am begging here

Don't do this. I saw this with Reagan. I did this with Reagan. I and others like me, like most of you are now, thought we were being so clever with our ripostes against him, against his factual boo-boos -- and it just made him stronger.

Most people don't like snooty smart-asses. I swear this to you on my Columbia diploma.

We have a lot to work with when it comes to Michele Bachmann. Her understanding of the Constitution, and the implications of that understanding, are jarring. People can get it. But if you try a lunge and this woman as if she were Sarah Palin, she will sidestep you, leave you on the ground, and kick you in the coccyx. She knows jujitsu. If we're going to beat her, it's not going to be by being snarky about little gaffes. It's going to be by demonstrating to everyone that her view of society is one that undermines what is great and dear about America.

It won't be easy, but we're the ones who will have to do it.

For those interested in more analysis of the Bachmann candidacy, check out this diary by Ray Pensador.

Hey, have you watched this segment on Democracy Now?