An Idea Whose Person Has Come (And, Soon, Gone)

"Doing It Wrong" - Drake (ft. Stevie Wonder)

Over at her WordPress blog, my friend Mila wrote a nice little piece of analysis about Michele Bachmann. She's writing and producing for Newsy at the moment, and it's a very capital-N Newsy piece. Mila gathers reporting (centering on the recent exodus of Bachmann's New Hampshire staff), organizes and presents it, and - almost as a lawyer might - suggests a conclusion by simply asking the obvious question. She has no money, her staff is leaving. Is Michele Bachmann's end near?

My direct answer: "of course it is." My actual answer: "of course it is, and so what?"

Bachmann - save for a brief period over the summer when the political press placed heavy emphasis on Iowa, her knock-out all-in state - was never a serious contender. Chris Christie's protracted decision not to run should have served as weighty reminder: running for president is no small thing. And he, despite swoons and catcalls from both the mainstream and conservative press, concluded that he simply wasn't prepared in a substantive way for a national campaign.

Rick Perry is proof positive. After floundering on the national stage, he's just now finding firmer footing playing on his own terms. His jobs plan? Drilling. His foreign policy? Don't mess with Texas - defund the UN. His immigration policy? Surprisingly compassionate, left of the field; a clear artifact of his many years working in the real world of immigration policy.

In this context -- the real world -- Bachmann had little chance. She has spent her time in DC posturing. Bills she has introduced, in no particular order:

• Affordable Care Act Repeal
• Dodd-Frank Repeal
• Some kind of paranoid thing stating the dollar can't be replaced w/ a foreign currency, which is uh already policy.
• My favorite: the Lightbulb Freedom of Choice act (Florida state representatives have midgets, Michele Bachmann has lightbulbs)

These are all simply platform statements formalized, not the hallmark of a serious politican. So why do we care so much about Bachmann's place in this primary race? There is another Bachmann introduction I left off the list, because it does stand a theoretical chance of passage: The Heartbeat Informed Consent Act.

The Heartbeat Informed Consent Act stipulates that before undergoing an abortion, a woman must listen to the fetus's heartbeat, and it tells us a lot about Bachmann and how she got where she is today. It's much more pragmatic and nuanced than her other bills. She is vehemently pro-life, and this bill acknowledges that people will have abortions. It shows that she, when she wants -- when she's truly compelled to act -- she understands how political process works (i.e. in increments) and can play the game ably. It also, in its cruelness (or perhaps, vindictiveness), shows what the thinks of those Americans who believe that sort of choice is a woman's right.

It's incredibly illuminating coming from the chairwoman of the Tea Party caucus. Liberty-obsessed and Constitutionally-driven, she of the Lightbulb Freedom of Choice Act holds a view of liberty that applies to your lightbulb purchase but not to a woman's body. The decrier of government, the Taxed Enough Already radical individualism standard-bearer can not only think of one area where government should intrude upon people's lives, she is adequately playing the game to make sure it does so. She introduced the bill.

And so Bachmann is the perfect representative for the Tea Party. The Tea Party started with a general sense of economic resentment, stated a few policy goals - notably the Cut, Cap, and Balance amendment - before it became clear (through, among other things, polling) that what they really cared about were social issues. Koch-funded, liberty-driven, what the Tea Party really wants is not smaller government (though they would certainly love that), but an America that looks more like the one in its head: one without gay marriage, one without abortions. Because when Hollywood is liberal and the majority of people who work in media are as well, it doesn't matter whose in the West Wing. Every day core conservatives wake up in a country that doesn't feel like it belongs to them. So, like many emotionally driven decisions, the movement has its hands tied: you're going to have very little success arguing for smaller government when what you really want is to leverage government as a cultural gatekeeper.

In It's A Wonderful Life, Potter tells George Bailey he's a man whose time has come, whose ship has just come in. In a great New Yorker article, David Remnick said in 2005 that in Mubarak's Egypt, democracy was an idea whose time had not yet come.

In this election, Bachmann is not a person or a politician so much as she is a signifier. She is the Tea Party - its grassroots, its astroturf, its rallies, its muddled history - personified. She rose with the Tea Party, a veritable True Believer, and as the political winds change (as crowds huddle for warmth in Zuccoti Park) she is falling with it, too. Her campaign is deeply in debt, disorganized, her campaign manager and meal ticket Ed Rollins is now openly and venomously criticizing her, she's had six chiefs of staff in five years, she absolutely has to win Iowa and even if she does, what then? Her path to nomination is unclear, if it exists. Occupy Wall Street's favorables are twice what the Tea Party's are. The base, dissatisfied with Romney and still searching for a viable Not-Romney has already looked at Bachmann and not cared for what it saw, now coalescing around Herman Cain instead, and then probably Gingrich, and then who knows?

The Tea Party was an idea whose time came and is now showing signs of going. You can almost see its crusader, Bachmann, standing in the wind. Wondering what happened to her momentum, her boom times and salad days, a newspaper blowing past, with just enough headline visible to make out "-9-9." She used to be the darling! What happened? Where is everybody?

"Anderson? Anderson? Anderson?"