Watching her step

As she settles into her new life in a Congress led by Democrats,
Michele Bachmann is learning hard lessons about politics in the glare
of YouTube -- and shifting to a more guarded style.

By Kim Ode, Star Tribune

Last update: July 23, 2007 – 5:55 PM

http://www.startribune.com/587/story/1315670.html

Michele Bachmann strides along the Capitol Mall, lit by the morning
sun shimmering off the marble of this impossibly gleaming city. In
sneakers and a trim jogging suit, her hair clipped back, she's more a
fresh-faced speed walker than the chic congresswoman from Minnesota
who vowed to "hit the ground running, even in high heels."
Bachmann loves to walk. Working up a sweat helps her cope with her
bustling new life in Congress, where she's relegated to a minority
role she hadn't bargained for, and where the studied protocol can test
a pencil-tapper and hair-twirler such as herself.

Bachmann, 51, has been here barely six months, a quarter of a term
that began with harsh headlines. She was widely mocked after the State
of the Union address for gripping President Bush's shoulder as firmly
as a mother at Target, then later for confidently claiming to know
about an Iranian plan to partition Iraq.

She offers no apologies, but the incidents have made her more wary,
more conscious that video cameras and YouTube have an audience, and
that the blogosphere has a taste for blood.

You have to stay on your toes.

So she walks the Mall, reclaiming a routine that lapsed after bunion
surgery on both feet after the campaign. Recovery meant weeks of
putting aside her favored kitten-heeled slides for clunky orthopedic
sandals. But she wore them, growing to realize the benefits of their
lower profile.

Congress wasn't supposed to be this way. During the campaign, the
Republicans controlled the gavels and Bush had the faith of the party.
Bachmann's victory as the first Republican woman sent from Minnesota
to the House was a payoff for fundraising visits by Laura Bush, Karl
Rove, Dick Cheney and the president himself. Yet Bachmann emerged as
one of only 13 Republican newcomers, the smallest freshman class in 60
years. And control of the House swung to the Democrats.

"It changed everything," she said.

Chairmanships shifted. Priorities were shuffled. The lightning-rod
conservative who swept into Washington on the votes of fundamentalist
Christians found herself in a House chamber controlled by Nancy
Pelosi, a take-no-prisoners liberal.

The power shift also upended her family's plans to deal with her
absence. The workweek during the last Congress was generally Tuesday
through Thursday. Now members are in session Monday through Friday.
"About the only way to see us is to take time off work, buy a plane
ticket and get to Washington," she said.

Sometimes, her husband, Marcus, and teenage daughters Elisa, Caroline
and Sophia do just that. (Sons Lucas and Harrison are in college.)
Bachmann flies home Friday nights, spends Saturdays working and tries,
mightily, to reserve Sundays for family. "If our kids weren't this
good," she said, "we couldn't do this."

Another emerging change is the erosion of support among citizens and
Congress for the president. Despite her respect -- some might say
starry-eyed admiration -- for Bush, Bachmann says his diminishing
influence has no impact on her.

"I ran to stand on my views," she said. "I have great respect for the
president for the stand he has taken against radical Islamo-fascists.
I've been very strongly behind the president in his desire to keep
Americans safe." But she disagreed with him on his "guest worker"
proposal for illegal immigrants and wants to repeal his No Child Left
Behind Act.

"He's become a big spender, and in some cases an out-of-control
spender, during his term in office, and I'm a strong fiscal
conservative," she said.

• • •

One sunny afternoon in May, members of the Minnesota Chamber of
Commerce settle into her cheerful office with its lemon-sherbet walls.
Swiveling in her chair, legal pad in her lap, Bachmann asks questions,
her next query often landing on the last syllable of someone's answer.

Overnight, she had advanced from being a state senator representing
85,000 suburban residents, mainly in Stillwater and northern
Washington County, to representing more than 600,000 Minnesotans in
the Sixth District.

The chamber visitors are a friendly crowd, but the reality of a
broadened constituency grows clear in a discussion about the proposed
Northstar commuter rail line. During the campaign, Bachmann was cool
to the idea, so distant from Stillwater. She advocated more roads and
more bridges. But this group wants her support.

Bachmann says the line should meet the test of a cost-benefit
analysis. If the actual cost of a trip is, say, $75, what commuter
would pay that? she asks, eyes wide. Who ends up subsidizing the
difference?

There is a beat of silence. Then the business leaders begin making
their points. One mentions that downtown Minneapolis simply cannot
handle additional bus traffic to serve commuters. Another points out
that road construction is subsidized, and besides, "there only are so
many more lanes you can lay down." Such alternatives to commuter rail
lines may cost far more than, say, $75 a trip.

Bachmann listens, sizing up the situation, but giving nothing away.
Then: "I'm not against light rail and never have been," she says and
deftly moves on.

• • •

Bachmann's political career began almost by chance.

Sen. Warren Limmer remembers meeting her in 2000 at the State Capitol
as she passionately argued against the high school graduation
standards called the Profile of Learning. To her, it smacked of
federal meddling.

"At the end of our discussion, I told her, if you're ever interested
in getting into politics, let me know," said Limmer, a Republican from
Maple Grove. "The next thing I know, she's running against Gary
Laidig," a GOP legislator for 28 years.

Accounts differ as to whether Bachmann arrived at the convention ready
to run (as the defeated say) or whether her speech against government
interference was spontaneous (as she says). In any case, the speech
swayed the crowd and she gained the state Senate nomination on the
first ballot.

Her success took many by surprise, including her family. Marcus came
home that night to an answering-machine message of congratulations to
Michele. It being April Fools Day, he thought he'd been had. But there
was another message, and another.

"By the third message, I realized this was real," he said, turning to
Michele as he told the tale. "I went upstairs and you were in bed -- I
think you were about to pull the sheet over your head. ..."I should
have been hiding in my closet," she said, laughing.

"And I said, 'Michele, is there something you want to share with me?'
"

Once in the Legislature, Bachmann established herself as one of the
Senate's most conservative members. Her energy seemed limitless. And
no issue galvanized her foes like her efforts against same-sex
marriage.

In 2005, she claimed to have been held against her will in a
restaurant bathroom by two critics of an amendment banning same-sex
marriage; they said they'd merely buttonholed her to talk. Then foes
claimed that Bachmann hid behind some bushes to spy on a gay-rights
rally; she said she was merely checking the turnout.

The fight came to a head in 2006 when Senate Majority Leader Dean
Johnson accused her of practicing "the politics of distraction"
despite pressing budget matters. Her stepsister, Helen LaFave, came
out publicly as a lesbian, testifying against the amendment. (LaFave
has since declined to comment.)

The amendment never came to a vote, and the topic receded during her
congressional campaign, which focused on taxes and spending issues.

As of last week, Bachmann has introduced one bill, H.R. 636, allowing
people to deduct their medical expenses on their taxes. She's
co-sponsored 50 bills. (Among her fellow freshman colleagues, Rep.
Keith Ellison has introduced six bills and co-sponsored 305; Rep. Tim
Walz has introduced three bills and a resolution, and co-sponsored 176
bills.)

• • •

Michele Marie Amble was born in 1956 into a family of Norwegian
Lutheran Democrats. When she was young, they moved from Iowa to
Minnesota, where she was an A student and a cheerleader and had hair
to her waist. She was named Miss Congeniality in the Miss Anoka
competition.

In 1970, her parents divorced, and her father moved to California.

Her mother, Jean, got a job at the First National Bank in Anoka,
earning $4,800 a year -- not enough to keep up the payments on their
home in Brooklyn Park. She sold the house and moved the family to a
small apartment in Anoka.

So when sixth-grader Michele wanted contact lenses, she knew she had
to tackle the expense herself.

She began babysitting at 50 cents an hour, stuffing dollar bills and
quarters into a small bank in her room for two years until, in the
summer before ninth grade, she'd earned enough.

Then, one afternoon as she bicycled along West River Road, a contact
lens flew out of her eye.

She and her mother got down on their hands and knees, peering at every
glint in the gravel, hoping that they wouldn't have to start pawing
through the brush that hemmed the highway. Finally, they rose,
empty-handed, to a loss that felt enormous. Somehow, Jean found the
money to buy a replacement, recalling that she could hardly let her
daughter's determination go unrewarded.

• • •

Bachmann remembers exactly what she was wearing when she decided that
she no longer was a Democrat: "A tan trenchcoat, blue pin-striped
shirt, like a tailored shirt, and dress slacks," she said. "It was a
vivid memory for me because it was a turning point philosophically."

She was a college senior, sitting on the hard seat of an Amtrak train,
headed back to Winona State College. She and her boyfriend, Marcus
Bachmann, had worked together on Jimmy Carter's campaign, even
attended the inaugural.

Now she was killing time reading "Burr," Gore Vidal's sardonic
historical novel about early U.S. history.

"He was kind of mocking the Founding Fathers and I just thought, 'What
a snot,' " she said. "I just remember reading the book, putting it in
my lap, looking out the window and thinking, 'You know what? I don't
think I am a Democrat. I must be a Republican.' "

She had gradually been growing disenchanted with how the country was
faring under Carter, while Ronald Reagan was beguiling the nation. "I
didn't consider myself overtly political. I certainly didn't think of
it as something that I would do as an occupation," she said.

She and Marcus met in Winona when both got student jobs as playground
supervisors. Finding much in common -- both had accepted Christ as
their savior when they were 16 -- they became friends. Then, in their
senior year, he invited her to a dorm party.

It was late October, when that first cold feels colder, especially in
the dark. As they walked together, comically distant in their bulky
down jackets, "he took my hand, and he put my hand in his pocket, and
I don't remember anything else," she said. "I was only thinking, 'What
does this mean? What does this mean?' "

They were married the following September at his parents' dairy farm
in Wisconsin. She'd been accepted to William Mitchell School of Law in
St. Paul but knew that would be grueling. "So we decided to take a
year off and 'be married.' " Over the next decade, they tag-teamed
their education, moving to Oklahoma for her law degree, then to
Virginia for his in clinical therapy. Their family began to grow.

While expecting their fourth child, they met friends who took in
pregnant teenagers. Inspired, they decided to become foster parents,
opening their home over six years to 23 girls who stayed for a few
weeks or a few years. "Four at a time were the most we had," Bachmann
said. "There were times I thought, 'I'm so tired I'll never get
conditioner in my hair again.' "

• • •

Heidi Frederickson, Bachmann's press secretary, was dying a little
inside. At Sophia Bachmann's 13th birthday party, a half-dozen teenage
boys were showing the congresswoman how to use her feet to play a game
beamed onto the floor of a movie-theater lobby.

A newspaper photographer clicked away. And with every click,
Frederickson winced.

To a press secretary, this was like watching an iceberg bobbing near
her ship of state. She could imagine the photo of a pair of heels amid
the boys' sneakers posted on some blog with a caption sniggering about
the congresswoman cavorting with underage youth.

(Sophia, it must be noted, was not dying, but treated her mom's
buoyancy as the most natural thing in the world. )

Blogs, YouTube and Photoshop have added a new level of scrutiny to
politics, and a new level of alertness to Frederickson's job. The
irony is that her strict vigilance only plays into the hands of people
such as Ken Avidor, a regular contributor to a blog called Dump
Michele Bachmann. (www.dumpbachmann. blogspot.com.)

"Bachmann's people are very secretive," said Avidor, a 52-year-old
Minneapolis comic artist, who said he is driven by Bachmann's lack of
support for public transportation.

"They protect her, they keep her away. It's the secrecy. We like
politics in America to be a discourse instead of a hit-and-run thing
like she does."

And Avidor's work --posting videos on YouTube and splicing her into
disparaging photo montages -- raises the level of such discourse?

He laughed. "You're right; it doesn't. But right now the politics have
reached a point where you have people who are so partisan and so
poisonous to the system that we have to do this."

So it becomes Frederickson's job to manage every moment as best she
can.

Bachmann also chooses her words with more care. During the campaign,
she was often chatty, gushing on her website about eating ice cream
with the president or to a reporter about shopping for a dress for
election night.

Now, she gives the impression that she's determined to say nothing
more than necessary to reporters. When talking about her shift from
the Legislature to the halls of Congress, she doesn't hold forth on
the politics of the power shift but brings up something more benign.

"One thing I've learned is that it rains almost every late afternoon,"
she said. "So I've learned to carry an umbrella with me."

But as to the political shift? "Obviously, had we been in the
majority, there probably would have been more tax cuts and also more
legislation that would control spending," she said. "On a personal
level, however, there are 435 members in the House and I have very
purposely tried to get to know as many as possible, because having a
good working relationship is everything."

• • •

This month, Bachmann traveled to Iraq, and despite more GOP defections
from Bush's base of support, she returned as firm as ever in her
conviction that the war is justified. Al-Qaida, she said, "doesn't
show any signs of letting up." The congressional delegation met with
Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, in one of Saddam
Hussein's palaces.

What was the palace like?

"It's absolutely huge," she said. "I turned to my colleagues and said
there's a commonality with the Mall of America, in that it's on that
proportion. There's marble everywhere. The other thing I remarked
about was there is water everywhere. He had man-made lakes all around
his personal palace -- one for fishing, one for boating."

She said she was heartened after visiting soldiers hospitalized in
Germany. "The first thing a soldier says when they come out of
anesthesia is, 'Let my sergeant know I'm ready to go back. When can I
go back?' They're determined not to leave, determined to go back and
finish the mission."

• • •

Back in Washington, Bachmann is on the phone with a supporter in
Minnesota who's feeling slighted. Her lunch -- a small box of Sun-Maid
raisins -- is on the desk. She knows the drill, expressing a folksy
empathy -- "I understand there have been some tough times at the
transportation corral" -- while not committing herself.

Suddenly, a disembodied squawk sounds from The Buzzer, the black box
on the end table that announces that a vote is being called. Bachmann
has 15 minutes to get from the fourth floor of the Cannon Building to
the Capitol.

She doesn't miss a beat, managing to end the conversation without
sounding as if she's giving him the bum's rush. If anything, the
statement that she has to go now -- with its unspoken implication that
the nation's business awaits -- lets them both bask in the power of
her position.

She reaches beneath her desk, exchanging her heels for those clunky
sandals, and seconds later is out the door, down the stairs and
speed-walking the two long blocks to the Capitol, getting waved
through security and striding onto the House floor.

Her vote cast, she returns to the office, climbing the 94 marble steps
with the energy of someone who can hardly believe she has been given
the chance to accomplish so much. She steams ahead, right up to the
sixth and final flight of gleaming marble.