A defense of Michele Bachmann: on reports of her church-going and migraines

There's a growing body of blog posts that begin with something to the effect of "I-don't-like-Michele-Bachmann's-politics-but..." This is another addition to that canon.

Bluestem doesn't much share Michele Bachmann's politics, but neither does it care for flimsily-reasoned attacks or outright smears. And of late, two pseudo-outrages circulate about the gentlewoman from Minnesota's Sixth Congressional District.

Church going

The first concerns her church-going, first reported by CNN in Michele Bachmann officially leaves her church. The article spells out what is mostly a matter of routine record keeping:

The Bachmanns approached their pastor and verbally made the request “a few weeks before the church council granted the request,” Hochmuth said. He added, “they had not been attending that congregation in over two years. They were still on the books as members, but then the church council acted on their request and released them from membership.”

Bachmann had listed her membership in the church on her campaign site for congress in 2006. She lists no church affiliation on her campaign website or her official congressional website.

Hochmuth said that a change in membership is not out of the ordinary. “You have people who are on the books as members, but they may have gone on to another church; they may not be attending a church anywhere. There’s all sorts of circumstances.”

A similar request for membership is to transfer membership from one church to another within the denomination. But that does not appear to be the case with the Bachmanns, according to Hochmuth, who said that to his knowledge, the couple was no longer attending a church within the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod . . .

When I was part of a mainstream Protestant denomination, I went through similar membership transfers and withdrew as a member of a congregation at which I had ceased attending. Look around the Web, and there's no shortage of people spinning the change of venue as a significant political drama. It's not, and the Bachmanns can worship where they want.

There's much less to the first story than meets the eye.

Migraine: a narrative arc to make my head hurt

Not so with the second. A Daily Caller piece about Michele Bachmann's migraines, is far more significant, though not because of its content. Rather, this piece is important because it signals the right's growing freak-out that she is running, and running well.

On Monday, the conservative publication chose to run Stress-related condition ‘incapacitates’ Bachmann; heavy pill use alleged The headline suggests far worse than migraines. And while the Minnesota Independent's Story on Bachmann’s migraines spins out of control is accurate, some of the collateral damage is to the campaigns suspected of leaking it.

At Americablog, Kombiz Lavasany asks Did team Pawlenty drop the "Bachmann is unstable and on meds" story?:

When the Daily Caller story about Michele Bachmann's health problems (she has migraine's and former staffers think the migraine's are too debilitating for her to ever be president) went online last night I was skeptical of any news value and thought the story was a low blow planted to help another Republican candidate.

The story had two sources who were obviously high level staff members or connected to high level staff members who worked for Michele Bachmann. A third person verified that Michele Bachmann does indeed get migraines. . . .

It's hard to prove, and it was just one source, until a Republican who is also suspicious that Pawlenty dropped the bogus story emailed me a link to another two high level staffers who would know about Bachmann's health problems, and who are also supporting the Pawlenty campaign. Those two other staffers are Gina Countryman and Tim Gould. Countryman was Palin's 2010 campaign manager and both former staffers would have been high enough to know about Bachmann's migraines. . . .

At Care 2, Robin Marty writes in Bachmann’s “Headaches”: A “Debilitating” Rumor To “Debilitate” A Candidacy:

Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann quickly jumped to the front of the pack after announcing her bid for the presidency. So it shouldn’t be a surprise to see the knives come out just as quickly to cut her down — in this case rumors that she suffers from “debilitating” medical episodes that frequently put her out for days at a time, and that she may be overly relying on, and potentially abusing, medication to keep her issues under control.

After noting that Michele Bachmann runs an aggressive campaign impossible for a debilitated candidate, Marty observes:

So why is this story happening now, and why this story, exactly? Making Bachmann a victim of her own illnesses, incapable of having the physical and emotional strength to run the country? Why, of course she’s not strong enough to lead — she’s a woman! She can’t handle stress, she falls apart when the situation gets too complicated, and she’ll crumble under pressure. This is why women cannot be put in leadership positions, right?

The narrative plays into the idea of the weak woman who cannot run — run a business, run a country. It’s nothing but a vicious, sexist hit piece that is meant to stop the woman who is not only outperforming nearly every male presidential candidate in the race, but is steadily gaining on the only candidate believed to be untouchable.

But she’s also leading the religious right, and a lot of candidates want to play for those votes. And pointing out to a group of religious voters who don’t believe women should even lead their households that a woman may be unfit to lead the nation would be a good way to try to sway them. Is a current, or even potentially new GOP candidate behind the attacks on Bachmann? It’s too soon to say. But I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if, once you start going through everyone’s staff lists, you might find a former Bachmann adviser sitting on one of them.

Later, Marty tweeted her thought that the culprit might be Texas Governor Rick Perry, rumored to be jumping into the race soon.

Update 7/21: This morning, Marty fleshed out her reasoning in Morning Mix: Who’s Coming After Bachmann?. She writes:

The press, which had been focusing just as much on how she was handling the allegations as they were on the severity of the condition itself, can now move onto a new question — who’s campaign tried to torpedo her?

First there’s the obvious suspect. All fingers seem ready to point at fellow Minnesotan Tim Pawlenty, the only candidate to speak up about the issue. His evasive “you can’t take time off as a president” non-answers are stirring the pot, and he has at least one former Bachmann chief of staff as a campaign supporter.

But honestly, that’s not very Pawlenty-like to me.

Find out why that's not the TPaw she knows and doesn't respect at her post. And Perry?

A better bet? Timing and style-wise, this smells like Rick Perry supporters.

Check it out. [end update]

Alexandra Petri at the Washington Post noodles whether sexism might be at the core of the hit in Not tonight, Michele Bachmann has a migraine headache:

Up until now, most of the questions about Bachmann’s fitness to serve haven’t revolved around the fact that she’s female. Is this the end of that? There's no denying that women have more migraines than men. 18 percent of women and only 6 percent of men suffer from migraines, according to the government’s Office on Women’s Health. Does that make the migraine a woman's disease? And is it sexist to ask? . . .

One of the lurking concerns with any female candidate is that she might suddenly be overwhelmed with some Woman Problem — like the Feminine Mystique, a horrifying and recurring condition — or that she would be so struck by the lack of adequate women's facilities in the Oval Office that she suddenly became unfit to govern. Is "migraines" code for "Michele Bachmann is female"?

Bachmann has released a doctor's letter about the condition, and this should, but probably won't, be the end of it.

Much more disturbing in the context of Bachmann's own career is the story of Brian Ross, reporter, accosted by Bachmann thugs for asking migraine question. Now that she leads Romney in a recent Iowa poll, while surging nationally, it's entirely possible she might be the Republican nominee. If she's elected, heaven help the freshman congress critter who grabs her shoulder and moves in for a peck on the presidential cheek.

Photo: Congresswoman Bachmann, causing headaches for years and years.