The Bobsie Twins

It was learned this past week that Michelle Bachman accused the media of trying to start a “mud wrestling fight” between her and Sarah Palin. The good lady may be guilty of a bit of hyperbole. But I must confess that the thought tickles the hell out of me.

At risk of seeming a chauvinist I’d also say that as prospective Tea Party approved presidential prospects go, these attractive middle age women, with unique versions of American history, are two are of a kind. Their revisionist hypotheses have helped people me like brighten otherwise dark days.

Sarah emerged from relative obscurity with her surprise selection as John McCain’s running mate three months before the election. Unlike W, whose handlers spent years “preparing” him, hers was a rush job and, as we now know, she is not amenable to advice. Her interviews with Katie Couric were disastrous, not as much for her answers as for her non answers. The totality of her education seemed to consist of reasonable fluency in the English language.

Since then she has played it cool with electronic statements and speeches filled with well worn right wing talking points. Her contact with the public can be summed up as “no questions please, just answers,” a wise decision in her case. But then she discovered Paul Revere and waxed eloquent on his riding the countryside firing shots and ringing bells on what was supposed to be a stealth mission. Worse yet she had him warning the British, his main weapon apparently being an NRA brochure. It may be hard to keep all the characters from that era straight. But confusing Paul Revere with Benedict Arnold is really overshooting the landing strip.

Michelle’s initial thrust was calling those who disagree with her as “anti-America” which isn’t going far out on the limb in the absence of specifics. But lately she seems to be fancying herself a historian. It’s one thing to put the Lexington and Concord of history in an adjacent state and quite another to say that the Founding Fathers worked “tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.” This overlooks something known as “the Civil War.” But she stuck to her guns and compounded the felony by citing ardent abolitionist John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams. The trouble is he was nine years old when his father signed the Declaration of Independence and he died fifteen years before the Emancipation Proclamation.

Back to that mud wrestling fight, I suspect Sarah would be the winner. They didn’t call her “barracuda” for nothing. But when it comes to winning the hearts, minds and, if necessary, votes of the Tea Partiers, Michelle has her badly outclassed. She has hired Ed Rollins, as respectable as right wing advisers go, and is pressing flesh like a pro. I would dread having her as president. But she has at least demonstrated the difference between a politician and a celebrity. When Fox’s Chris Wallace asked her if she was a “flake,” it must have been a case of mistaken identity.      

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