Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg: What Michele Bachmann Doesn't Know About History
[Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg are Professors of History at Louisiana State University and co-authors of "Madison and Jefferson" (Random House, 2010). Isenberg is also the author of "Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr" (2007).]
At a rally last week, Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann playfully confessed to having campaigned for Jimmy Carter in 1976. Waiting for the laughter to subside, she went on to say that it was as a junior (elsewhere she has said senior) at Minnesota’s Winona State College, sitting on a train and trying to work her way through Gore Vidal’s 1973 bestseller, "Burr," that she gave up on the volume in her hand and all at once converted to the Republican Party. Vidal’s book was, Bachmann asserted, a founder-hating tome, apparently so violent in its anti-American rhetoric that it redirected her whole system of belief.
Here is how she put it: "He was going after our founders, and he was mocking them, and he was making fun out of them." Loosely based on historical events, "Burr" is purely fictional and fairly cynical, though the critics in 1973 found it quite entertaining. The novel does suggest that the founders were complex, calculating, and not always morally upright–in other words, that the politicians of old were not entirely unlike the politicians of today. But what could possibly have led young Michele, in 1976-77, to see the Republican Party as the moral antithesis of the Carter Democrats, or the Democrats reflected in a "snotty" historical novel?
Think back. In the mid-1970s, the Republican Party was foundering (yes, foundering) in the wake of President Nixon’s resignation and the publication of his embarrassingly coarse and petty and conniving remarks on tape. The vast majority of Americans were disgusted with Nixon, abettor of a criminal conspiracy, his official image tarnished by the foul-mouthed recordings. It seems less than credible that the erstwhile Democrat Michele was more horrified by Vidal’s fiction than by a flesh-and-blood president who left office in disgrace. So, what really made her a Republican? We may never know. But rest assured, with "Burr" she has invented a quaint story for herself, one she knows she can market effectively to her unquestioning devotees in certain parts of the Midwest....
Read entire article at Salon
At a rally last week, Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann playfully confessed to having campaigned for Jimmy Carter in 1976. Waiting for the laughter to subside, she went on to say that it was as a junior (elsewhere she has said senior) at Minnesota’s Winona State College, sitting on a train and trying to work her way through Gore Vidal’s 1973 bestseller, "Burr," that she gave up on the volume in her hand and all at once converted to the Republican Party. Vidal’s book was, Bachmann asserted, a founder-hating tome, apparently so violent in its anti-American rhetoric that it redirected her whole system of belief.
Here is how she put it: "He was going after our founders, and he was mocking them, and he was making fun out of them." Loosely based on historical events, "Burr" is purely fictional and fairly cynical, though the critics in 1973 found it quite entertaining. The novel does suggest that the founders were complex, calculating, and not always morally upright–in other words, that the politicians of old were not entirely unlike the politicians of today. But what could possibly have led young Michele, in 1976-77, to see the Republican Party as the moral antithesis of the Carter Democrats, or the Democrats reflected in a "snotty" historical novel?
Think back. In the mid-1970s, the Republican Party was foundering (yes, foundering) in the wake of President Nixon’s resignation and the publication of his embarrassingly coarse and petty and conniving remarks on tape. The vast majority of Americans were disgusted with Nixon, abettor of a criminal conspiracy, his official image tarnished by the foul-mouthed recordings. It seems less than credible that the erstwhile Democrat Michele was more horrified by Vidal’s fiction than by a flesh-and-blood president who left office in disgrace. So, what really made her a Republican? We may never know. But rest assured, with "Burr" she has invented a quaint story for herself, one she knows she can market effectively to her unquestioning devotees in certain parts of the Midwest....