On “Meet the Press” Sunday, Iowa straw poll winner Rep. Michele Bachmann was asked to make the case that she has the “judgment and experience” to be president of the United States. Bachmann listed several qualifications — her work as a tax attorney, small businesswoman, state senator in Minnesota, and member of Congress — but the first thing she said was, “I have a lifetime of experience. I’m 55 years old. I’ve been married 33 years.”
It’s not unusual for Bachmann to cite the success of her marriage as one of the reasons voters should have confidence in her as a leader. Doing that has brought attention not only to her husband, Marcus Bachmann, but also to the role he has played in her career. Voters are still getting to know Michele Bachmann, and her own speeches have sometimes put her marriage center stage.
Which is why some observers — many of them Democratic foes of Bachmann, but some Republicans as well — are interested in something she said in 2006, during her first campaign to represent the Sixth District of Minnesota in Congress. During a campaign appearance at the Living Word Christian Center in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota on October 15, 2006, Bachmann devoted some time to explaining the importance of God’s calling at critical moments in her life. She told the audience how she met Marcus Bachmann, how she earned a law degree at Oral Roberts University, and how it happened that she returned to school for a second degree:
Bachmann went on to say that God later called her to run for the state Senate in Minnesota and, still later, for the U.S. Congress. After the church posted a video of her appearance on its website, a left-wing blogger picked it up and spread it on anti-Bachmann sites. If Bachmann’s opponents were hoping it would be the end of her campaign, they were wrong; Bachmann won the race in 2006 and has been re-elected twice since.
But Bachmann’s statement — in public, on stage, microphone in hand, in the context of a political campaign — raised a legitimate question. What role does her husband play in her performance in public office? With that in mind, I asked Bachmann this question at the Fox News-Washington Examiner debate in Ames, Iowa on Thursday night:
The audience in Iowa State University’s Stephens Auditorium was made up mostly of Republican activists, and to call the question unpopular in the room would be an understatement. Bachmann paused a few seconds as the crowd booed. And then she answered:
In the days since the debate, a number of commentators have taken issue with the question. “Snarky and uninformed,” wrote Focus on the Family’s Glenn Stanton on National Review Online. “It is really an obscene question, both in its blatant misunderstanding of Christian teaching and in the disrespect it shows the candidate as a woman and a wife.”
“Submitting to Stupid Questions,” said the headline of an opinion article in the Washington Post. Referring to a complaint by Newt Gingrich that some of the debate questions constituted “Mickey Mouse games,” the Post’s Alexandra Petri wrote that, “The epitome of the Mickey Mouse games came late in the evening, in a question posed to Rep. Michele Bachmann.”
“When we look at many of the vital issues facing this country, who in their right mind would waste time during a nationally-televised debate asking the only female GOP candidate about whether she would submit to her husband in the White House?” asked CNN’s Roland Martin. (Just for the record, my first question to Bachmann was about taxes, and she faced questions from the Fox/Examiner panel on the economy, the debt ceiling, the war on terror, and other topics.)
One striking feature of the criticism is that it did not examine, and in some cases didn’t even mention, the premise of the question. One can read Stanton’s critique all the way through and never have any idea of what Bachmann actually said back in 2006 said that formed the basis of the question. Petri ignored it as well, beyond saying that Bachmann had “once alluded to submissiveness in a speech.” To his credit, Martin included the entire debate question, but does not appear to have looked any farther into the matter. The critics suggested the question was without basis by simply ignoring its basis.
The “submissive” question returned on Sunday, when Bachmann, fresh from her victory in the straw poll, was asked about it on “Meet the Press.” Noting that she had already answered the question at the debate, Bachmann said, “‘Submission,’ that word, means respect. It means that I respect my husband and he respects me.”
Will that put an end to the question? Probably not. Bachmann’s point that “submission” means “respect” will likely ensure that she is asked the question again in the future. After all, the point of the 2006 story was that she made a major career decision that she didn’t want to make because her husband told her to — because she believed God was calling her through her husband. Some critics just won’t buy it, and as long as Bachmann is running for the highest office in the land, things she has said in the past will always be a part of the political conversation.
Bachmann’s fans, of course, not only don’t care about the question but are offended it was asked. As far as the large number of undecided Republican primary voters is concerned, it’s not clear they know enough about Bachmann to have thought about it.
Whatever the case, Bachmann’s answer in Ames Thursday night was by far the most human moment of her appearance in the debate — a far cry from her tough exchanges with former Minnesota Gov. (and now former candidate) Tim Pawlenty. At their best, debates tell us new things about candidates and allow us to learn more about aspects of their personalities we haven’t seen before. Is there any doubt that moment in Ames on Thursday night did just that for Michele Bachmann?
