By the time Michele Bachmann bounded up onstage — 5 ft. 2 in. tall,
full of fire and bellowing, “There’s no place like Iowa!” — the
faithful at the Des Moines Marriott appeared ready for something
different. The conservative crowd had sat for almost four hours,
watching Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour open with a joke Conrad
Hilton supposedly told on The Ed Sullivan Show a half-century
ago. They heard Newt Gingrich propose using the Internet to solicit
ideas for new Executive Orders. But then came Bachmann, a Minnesota
Congresswoman who whipped up the crowd like a football coach at a
pregame rally. “I’m in,” she shouted. “You’re in. We will take this back
in 2012!”
For the most part, the start of the next presidential campaign has
generated as much excitement as the drop of a wet towel. The likely GOP
field is a collection of current and former governors and some party
fixtures, all of whom seem determined to tiptoe their way to the
nomination without breaking a sweat. Other GOP luminaries, such as Sarah
Palin and Mike Huckabee, appear hesitant to run. Bachmann does not have to win Iowa to disrupt the GOP race. Simply by
depriving other candidates of votes in the first contest, she could play
a decisive role in culling the field. But in any case, a win in Iowa
wouldn’t guarantee her an easy march to the nomination. Bachmann’s
incendiary style could turn off voters down the road. In the past, she
has joked inaccurately about the “coincidence” that swine flu emerged
during the Carter and Obama presidencies, fretted publicly that Obama
might have “anti-American” sentiments and decried what she calls the
“gangster government” in the U.S. “People have to draw the conclusion
that they can definitely see her as President of the United States,”
says Bob Vander Plaats, a kingmaker in the Iowa GOP. “She will not be
the nominee,” predicted one strategist with a rival campaign. “Maybe a
nice diversion for a while.” Bachmann may also have trouble building a complex campaign operation.
She has burned through four chiefs of staff in five years, often
preferring her own counsel or that of her close-knit family. She writes
her own speeches and relies heavily on her husband and her oldest son, a
Connecticut doctor, for advice. Such an arrangement usually makes for a
rocky crusade. Ron Carey, a former Minnesota party chair who quit as her
chief of staff last summer, says he will not support Bachmann despite
their long friendship. “I agree with Michele Bachmann 99% of the time on
policy issues,” he says. “But just like Dorothy, I’ve been to Oz and
I’ve looked behind the curtain.” Such nay-saying has never given
Bachmann much pause, however. By all appearances, she is just getting
started. — With reporting by Katy Steinmetz / Washington
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