Mis-underestimating Michele

One of the few good things George W. Bush left for us was the term "misunderestimate." Now it looks there is a new wearer of the mantle. Michele Bachmann.

As she has made headlines over the past two years, I thought I had her accurately pegged as a dingbat, and a loud-mouthed, right wing, genuine dingbat at that.

When she began talking about running for president, I dismissed it as a joke from the same bag of tricks as Donald Trump. But then she began to remake her image by actually being different. She stopped making such outrageous claims, gradually toned it down.

And the difference in her at the debate Monday night was a stark contrast. Although her policies are still somewhat to the right of the GOP fringe, and she has become the darling of the Tea Party crowd, she actually showed herself to be something akin to a credible candidate -- at least in the crowd she was with onstage in New Hampshire Monday night. Which is not too big a challenge as long as you can say "tax cuts" and bad things about ObamaCare.

From Wikipedia, I learned that she was in the first graduating class from Oral Roberts Law School. She later got a master's degree in tax law from William and Mary Law School and worked for some years as a tax attorney for the IRS. Although her family were Norwegian Lutherans, she spend time working on a kibbutz in Israel after high school. She has been elected and re-elected to represent her Minnesota district in Congress where she sits on the Joint Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and where she also founded and heads the Tea Party Caucus. She has had five children of her own and been foster parent to another 23 kids.

In the debate, she seemed to be taking some of her cues from Tim Pawlenty (he's the one she's probably concentrating on taking votes from -- and he doesn't have many to spare) and she did seem to reverse herself on states' rights (depending on whether it helped or hurt the cause of prohibiting gay marriage*). But she made no major gaffes, and she seemed far more knowledgeable than Sarah Palin.

So, inevitably, there were morning-after comparisons. The consensus seems to be that she has moved out of Palin's shadow. She actually seemed to be much better informed and able to handle questions far more adeptly than Palin, whether it was about domestic policies or about foreign affairs. You may vehemently disagree with her positions, but you don't cringe in vicarious embarrassment as I did with Palin's pathetic lack of knowledge.

She can raise formidable amounts of money -- in fact she already has. And she has hired some highly experienced, GOP establishment people to run her campaign -- starting with Ed Rollins as her campaign manager.

Is my negative opinion about Michele softening? No. But she has proved that she can shed the dingbat image and discuss policies and issues much better than Palin. And she still knows how to hit the hot buttons to fire up the right-wing crowd. That makes her more dangerous now. Move her from the dingbat column into the contender column.

Look for her to do well in Iowa -- a neighboring state and where she was actually born. So she's making a big fuss about being a native. Remember, this is the GOP primary, not the general election; and the GOP in Iowa is very conservative, especially on social issues. That's where they recently recalled the judges who had voted to allow gay marriage.

Ralph

* See, she believes in states' right to pass laws that forbid gay marriage or abortion; but she also thinks federal law she supercede, when it suits her purpose: like DOMA and like the amendment to the Constitution she favors that would define marriage as between a man and a woman.