Michael Tomasky's Blog, page 13

Obama anxious to keep his toes out of Libyan water

US presidents who get involved in wars can very easily come unstuck and Obama is acutely aware of the dangers

The famous axiom in America that "politics stops at the water's edge" is meant to convey the notion that while the two parties may spar over domestic matters, when it comes to foreign affairs, there are no Democrats and Republicans, only Americans. The saying was coined by Arthur Vandenberg, the Republican chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee when Harry Truman was president. It was arrant fiction then, as it is now, but the difference is that it used to be a fiction Washington wanted to believe.

Faith in that fiction did its share of damage over the years: in Vietnam, for example, where critics were relegated to respectability's far margins. From the Vietnam years to the Iraq war, Vandenberg's little apothegm slowly lost credibility. Now, we no longer even bother with it: politics never stops in today's America. And that's why Barack Obama wants out of this little war faster than green grass goes through a goose (another American saying, and this one, at least, is true).

The first post-bombing public opinion poll shows why. When about 1,000 US adults were asked by CNN whether they approved of Obama's handling of the Libya situation, 50% said yes and 41% said no. At the beginnings of foreign excursions, presidents usually enjoy support of at least around 70% and maybe up to 90%; 70% means all the members of his own party, a solid majority of independents and even a decent sprinkling from the other party.

Obama's 50% breaks down in the following way. Democrats approve 73:20%. Independents are exactly split, 44:44%. And Republicans disapprove 27:63%. And remember, 50 is probably his high point here. The American people are impatient, leery and above all adamant that no ground troops be involved. And they are more than a little worried about that. When asked by CNN if they felt the US would achieve its goals in Libya without introducing ground troops, the confident to non-confident score was only 55:42%: better than the obverse, but indicative of a fair degree of nervousness.

In Hollywood, wars make heroes of presidents; in real life, wars crush them. Truman left office disgraced by Korea, mired in the twenties in the polls. Vietnam ended Lyndon Johnson's career, and it did little for Richard Nixon's. George Bush Sr is the exception – he got a Gulf war boost, but it was fleeting, demonstrating that reliberating Kuwait hadn't impressed Americans much after all. And later, of course, Iraq sank his son.

Obama's position is made all the more perilous by the fact that Republicans are the default war party and Democrats are the default peace party. The people who normally back a good shoot-up will oppose this one, just because it's Obama's. And the people inclined to oppose war by reflex will give the president their backing for a while, but history and precedent suggest that it won't be long before they revert to true form (as some already have). Obama, still just below 50% in polls and heading toward a massive domestic budget fight, cannot afford anything remotely resembling a foreign entanglement. The president is a lot less interested in whether Gaddafi stays or goes than whether he goes himself.

US politicsLibyaVietnamBarack ObamaArab and Middle East unrestMichael Tomasky
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Success, failure and multilateralism | Michael Tomasky

David Brooks writes an odd sentence today (the second one):

...today, as an impeccably crafted multilateral force intervenes in Libya, certain old feelings are coming back to the surface. These feelings have been buried since the 1990s, when multilateral efforts failed in Kosovo, Rwanda and Iraq.

Hmmm. What failed in Iraq in 1991? The mission was to get Saddam out of Kuwait, and the mission was accomplished. In Kosovo, the mission to stop violence and restore autonomy to Kosovo. Those things (pretty much) happened. Rwanda was a failure all right, but wasn't that because the West's slowness and non-intervention contributed to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people?

There are any number of criticisms to be made of the Kosovo and 1991 Iraq exercises. Kosovo of course was and is often attacked as having been illegal under Nato's bylaws. The gulf war had many critics on the left who saw it as none of the US's business to get into a regional dispute and on the right who argued that the troops should have gone straight to Baghdad (they got their way eventually).

Maybe Brooks means that - that we didn't take Milosevic and Hussein out. But those weren't in the mission statements. There is of course much confusion today, especially in London, about whether removing Gaddafi from power is part of this mission. Officially it is not. Unofficially, we bombed his compound.

Multilateralist humanitarian intervention does not, in fact, have a terrible track record. One would be hard-pressed to say it has a brilliant track record. In Bosnia, it took far too long to act and many people were killed. And there will always be deaths of innocent civilians, and that's clearly a terrible thing. But recent history tends to show that genuinely multilateral interventions achieve their goals.

Many people would dispute that this is genuinely multilateral, which leads to what is in many ways the most interesting question about it. Assuming the US draws down pretty quickly, which is what everyone keeps saying, this operation is mostly going to be in the hands of the French, who want to lead it, and the British, who are more ambivalent about assuming that role. That's what's new. First time since Suez. Should I have mentioned that?

US foreign policyIraqKosovoRwandaMichael Tomasky
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Libya and the constitution | Michael Tomasky

Mike Lind has a scathing piece in Salon on what he calls the "completely unconstitutional" Libya...what do we call it, anyway? Exercise? Invasion? Anyway Lind believes that Obama's failure to secure a congressional resolution approving the action directly violates the constitution, and he quotes to pretty devastating effect the words of an eariler Obama, who said:

The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

As Commander-in-Chief, the President does have a duty to protect and defend the United States. In instances of self-defense, the President would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent.

The UN security council does have the authority to approve such non-imminent-threat incursions, but provided that the member-nations follow their own constitutional processes in arriving that their support for any UN resolution. For good measure, Lind makes this point about the recent 10-0 security council vote - not a binding point, necessarily, but food for thought:

What do the five countries that registered their opposition to the Libyan war have in common? They make up most of the great powers of the early twenty-first century. A few years back, Goldman Sachs identified the so-called "BRIC's" -- Brazil, Russia, India and China -- as the most important emerging countries in the world. The opponents of the Libyan war on the Security Council are the BRIC's plus Germany, the most populous and richest country in Europe.

Including the United States, the Security Council nations that voted for the no-fly zone resolution have a combined population of a little more than 700 million people and a combined GDP, in terms of purchasing power parity, of roughly $20 trillion. The Security Council countries that showed their disapproval of the Libyan war by abstaining from the vote have a combined population of about 3 billion people and a GDP of around $21 trillion.

If the U.S. is factored out, the disproportion between the pro-war and anti-war camps on the Security Council is even more striking. The countries that abstained from the vote account for more than 40 percent of the human race. The countries that joined the U.S. in voting to authorize attacks on Libya, including Britain and France, have a combined population that adds up to a little more than 5 percent of the human race.

The truth is that the U.S. is joined in its war on Libya by only two second-rank great powers, Britain and France, which between them carved up North Africa and the Middle East a century ago, slaughtering and torturing many Arabs in the process. Every other major power on earth (with the exception of Japan, which is not on the Council and has been quiet) opposed the Anglo-French-American attack in North Africa, registering that opposition by abstentions rather than "no" votes in the Security Council.

Now my understanding of the War Powers Act, passed after some Nixon abuses of power, is that the president can launch such actions but must notify Congress within 48 hours and get congressional approval within 60 days. But that assumes this will last 60 days, which I think is an open question right now.

Meanwhile, Dennis Kucinich wants to see Obama impeached. A handful of Republicans, mostly libertarians who are isolationists, have spoken out against the action. Major congressional Republicans haven't said much yet.

But look for Republicans to start raising this constitutional question aggressively. It takes a lot of stones for many of them to do this, but they'll do anything, as we know. If Obama's for it, they're against it. Obama could propose that we bomb Iran off the map and that millionaires pay an effective tax rate of zero, and they'd find reasons to oppose, just because the ideas were his.

That said, Obama had better go to the American people, quickly, and explain why this is being done, what it's for, and what the limits are. Maybe we're heading off a slaughter and a massive refugee crisis, but as we saw with the unemployment rate that never got to 14% and the non-collapse of General Motors, it's hard to convince people that the not-very-appealing reality of the present is preferable to the hypothetical worse things that never happened. That's assuming those bad things don't happen here. Ay yi yi...

Obama administrationUS foreign policyLibyaMichael Tomasky
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Our last pacifist president | Michael Tomasky

I was just chatting with some folks and the question came up, who's the last American president not to launch a war? Well, basically, the answer is Ronald Reagan.

All right, he did launch a war, but it was littlest teeniest tiniest war you could imagine. The invasion of Grenada, code name Operation Urgent Fury, which lasted about as long as your average NCAA basketball game. Okay, it lasted a week or so. But it was just 8,000 soldiers with only 19 killed. It was awfully small potatoes.

It's instructive to think of the Libya business in this specific historical context, by which I mean, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War has dramatically lowered the stakes on such excursions.

Remember during the Reagan years when 243 US Marines were killed in Beirut? Reagan blustered a lot, but actually did not much of anything. From the Wiki entry on the attacks:

In retaliation for the attacks, France launched an airstrike in the Beqaa Valley against alleged Islamic Revolutionary Guards positions. President Reagan assembled his national security team and planned to target the Sheik Abdullah barracks in Baalbek, Lebanon, which housed Iranian Revolutionary Guards believed to be training Hezbollah militants.[21] A joint American-French air assault on the camp where the bombing was planned was also approved by Reagan and Mitterrand. Defense Secretary Weinberger, however, lobbied successfully against the missions, because at the time it was not certain that Iran was behind the attack.

In fact, there was no serious retaliation for the Beirut bombing from the Americans,[22] besides a few shellings. In December 1983, U.S. aircraft from the USS John F. Kennedy and USS Independence battle groups attacked Syrian targets in Lebanon, but this was ostensibly in response to Syrian missile attacks on American warplanes.

Multi-service ground-support units were withdrawn from Beirut after the attack on the Marine barracks due to retaliatory threats.

The stakes are a lower with no "evil empire" around to lend support to the other side. And sure enough, all of our post-cold war presidents have now launched big (or in the case of Libya potentially big) foreign adventures. This is a topic that deserves more discussion in the US.

I still think as of today that it remains a little bit possible that this is brief and that in a few days' time, or next week, Obama says: okay, we've sorted out Benghazi, we've taken out some of Gaddafi's offensive capabilities, the rebels are now back on a level playing field, and we're out. It's up to the Libyans and the Europeans to sort this out now. Note that I said a little bit possible. A factor here is that one hopes that the pro-Gaddafi people in the country now will largely abandon him.

Polls on this are going to start coming out this week, and my bet is they won't be very supportive. The pressure will be immense in the US to make this fast.

US foreign policyLibyaRonald ReaganMichael Tomasky
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Gaddafi's letter to Obama | Michael Tomasky

The American right will undoubtedly have a lot of fun with the way Gaddafi opens his letter to Obama:

"To our son, his excellency, Mr Barack Hussein Obama. I have said to you before, that even if Libya and the United States of America enter into a war, god forbid, you will always remain a son. Your picture will not be changed."

Aw that's sweet. It reflects nothing except the chemical confrontations taking place in Gaddafi's mind, but let them have their sport with it.

The other part of the letter, however, is more intriguing:

"Al-Qaida is an armed organisation, passing through Algeria, Mauritania and Mali. What would you do if you found them controlling American cities with the power of weapons? What would you do, so I can follow your example."

Obama should call his bluff and answer the letter, saying, well, your excellency, here is what I would do. First of all, I would not have presided over a closed and repressive society without democracy for 40 years. I'd have elections. If I were voted out, I'd go, peacefully. I'd have a free press. You may have noticed that my political opponents say some rough things about me. That's how it works in a mature society.

Here's what our State Department says about your government:

The government's human rights record remained poor. Citizens did not have the right to change their government. Continuing problems included reported disappearances; torture; arbitrary arrest; lengthy pretrial and sometimes incommunicado detention; official impunity; and poor prison conditions. Denial of fair public trial by an independent judiciary, political prisoners and detainees, and the lack of judicial recourse for alleged human rights violations were also problems. The government instituted new restrictions on media freedom and continued to restrict freedom of speech (including Internet and academic freedom). It continued to impede the freedom of assembly, freedom of association, and civil liberties. The government did not fully protect the rights of migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees, and in some cases participated in their abuse. Other problems included restrictions on freedom of religion; corruption and lack of transparency; discrimination against women, ethnic minorities, and foreign workers; trafficking in persons; and restriction of labor rights.

Now I know you will dispute these matters, but many independent international observers say the same thing. So I'll tell you what, dude. You change those conditions, we'll call the whole thing off.

Won't happen; would be awesome. Okay, I'm traveling early part of next week. I will do a little posting, so do check in.

Barack ObamaMuammar GaddafiMichael Tomasky
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Obama's statement, and Libya three months from now | Michael Tomasky

Just watched Potus' press statement on Libya. The sentence that mattered was the one in which he defined the mission: to protect the Libyan people from further abuses. Not to overthrow Gaddafi. To protect the people.

That's the right thing to say now, and I'm sure that's the mission...now. But will it remain the mission? It seems to me that ineluctably, the mission will become regime change. Isn't that the only logical end point of the whole business?

Serbia instructs that maybe it's not. As I noted yesterday, Milosevic stayed in power after that aerial campaign. But the Serbs were chased from Kosovo. Milosevic retreated from Kosovo after several weeks of bombing and accepted peace terms.

That's a big difference. We're not trying to chase Gaddafi out of a country or region he invaded and occupied, and if he just goes home, we'll leave him alone. We're hunting him down in his home. This ceasefire is probably a short-term ploy. If it's not, good, then maybe we don't have to do anything just now. In that scenario, at best, the country reverts to the status quo ante, but that seems unlikely, because now the regime has thousands of "political enemies" to go after, and presumably it will keep going after them.

I was watching Obama thinking, here we go again. Another president announcing a short and specific incursion. Hey, sometimes it works. We got Hussein out of Kuwait and Milosevic out of Kosovo fairly easily. But going after someone in his own nest is another matter. And I kept wondering, dear Lord, what's he going to be saying, possibly, at another of these press statements three months from now?

In fact: fill in the blank. In three months' time, the situation in Libya will be _____.

Obama administrationLibyaMichael Tomasky
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Tomasky Talk: Libya, the budget and Charlie Sheen - video

Michael Tomasky reviews a busy week for Hillary Clinton, tough times for John Boehner, and Charlie Sheen's poll ratings v Sarah Palin

Michael Tomasky

Friday quiz: states of dissolution | Michael Tomasky

Hang the bunting, sound the alarms, wake the children: the Friday quiz returns today. But before we get to that, one little piece of housekeeping. "Of course Tom Waits deserves to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. I was oh so terribly and inexcusably wrong; somehow confusing Tom Waits with John Waite. My sincerest apologies to all, and to Mr. Waits in particular. I should be punished for my momentary lapse." That language either came to me in a dream last night, or in an email from a certain RM. In either case, all right, I'll go buy that CD some of you mentioned and have a listen.

Very well. Today's topic is a mildly esoteric one: countries that no longer exist. I think it must have been the current turmoil in the world that lodged in my subconscious and made me think about how regimes and borders and cultures and affinities change over the decades and centuries. Did any of you Americans hear the report on NPR the other day about the Lega Nord, or the Northern League of Italy, and its refusal to participate in this year's 150th anniversary commemorations of unification? Tensions now are such that League members walk out of the room when the national anthem is played:

At a recent rally, League supporters hailed "a free Padania," their idealized independent statelet, named after the Latin word for the River Po. Supporters also hailed the recent burning in effigy of unity hero Giuseppe Garibaldi.

"Garibaldi was a mercenary," one man said, "financed by English Freemasons."

Can't you English ever keep your hands out of other people's pies? Honestly. Good thing we Yanks don't behave that way.

It seems pretty clear these days, though I've not read any academic work on the subject, that the trend line tilts strongly toward disunity. The USSR split up, then Yugoslavia, then Czechoslovakia. The argument for splitting Iraq into three countries was plausible, even if it didn't get anywhere. It might be that to some extent, the large nation-state that cobbled together disparate peoples and cultures was an artifact of the industrial age, because, well, size matters in an industrial-age context, while the information age, which demands speed and agility more than size and strength, will lead to smaller and more culturally coherent and homogenous states. Along with the fact that many national borders are completely artificial anyway for reasons with which we're all familiar, and when people have the chance to draw their own lines, they'll draw them so as to keep it all in the mespoche, so to speak. That's been my working theory for some time, at any rate (I mean, this will play out over the next century, not decade). And then of course there's my theory of the coming US crack-up, which I see in this broader context.

So borders are as fungible as anything else, as the coming 12 questions will demonstrate. We'll start by going back in time a ways, but mostly these are from modernity onward.

1. This kingdom ceased to exist in 1800, when the parliament of the country in question passed the so-called acts of union, which carried with substantial majorities, reportedly won over by bribery such as offers of peerages:
a. The Kingdom of Ireland
b. The Kingdom of Scotland
c. The Prince-Bishopric of Liege

2. Most people know that the US state of Texas was for a brief time an independent republic. But so was one other state, from 1777 to 1791, where rebels rose up to protest King George III's edict ceding the land grants of this future state to the larger state just to its west:
a. New Jersey
b. Rhode Island
c. Vermont

3. Bohemia, Galicia and Lombardy were ethnic regions within:
a. The Holy Roman Empire
b. The Austro-Hungarian Empire
c. Napoleonic France

4. The Republic of Nueva Granada, which existed in South America from 1831-1858, grew out of rebellions led by Simon Bolivar and Francisco Santander and consisted of which modern-day countries:
a. Argentina and Paraguay
b. Colombia and Panama
c. Peru and Chile

5. In the 1500s, the Ottoman Empire stretched from the Persian Gulf nearly to Gibraltar. It lost vast chunks of territory over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries before its dissolution in the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. Name the correct chronological order in which the Ottomans lost these three territories:
The Levant
Greece
The Balkans

6. If you know some 20th-century history, you are probably familiar with the name of the short-lived state of Manchukuo, sometimes called the Manchu state. What exactly was it?
a. A "state" that existed only in exile, of Manchurian resistance fighters against Japan, financed by the Chinese during the 1930s
b. A puppet state of Japan that covered much of Manchuria and inner Mongolia from 1931-1945
c. A proto-Maoist state in Manchuria that existed very briefly after World War II but before the communist takeover of China

7. Which European nation did not exist from 1795 to 1918?
a. Norway
b. Portugal
c. Poland

8. We know that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics consisted of 15 republics after 1956. But in the early days, there were other such republics that didn't last long. There was for example a Soviet Republic of Naissaar, an island off Estonia. This other republic came into being in 1920 but collapsed the next year, in part because of opposition among the deeply religious local population, and in part because the Soviet Union by then had moved away from Trotsky's goal of spreading the revolution.
a. The Persian Soviet Socialist Republic
b. The Anatolian Soviet Socialist Republic
c. The Soviet Socialist Republic of Uppsala

9. In the late 1940s, unification talks between two Eastern bloc countries were proceeding, and representatives of the nations were summoned to Moscow. The Kremlin insisted that the unified entity report directly to it. The representatives of one country agreed, while the representatives of the other balked and left Moscow. Name the countries, respectively.
a. Bulgaria, Yugoslavia
b. Romania, Hungary
c. Albania, Bulgaria

10. Match the name of the modern-day independent African state to the name of its colonial predecessor:
Guinea
Madagascar
Ghana
Burkina Faso

Gold Coast
French West Africa
Upper Volta
Malagasy Protectorate

11. True or false: then-president Vaclav Havel supported the dissolution of Czechoslovakia.

12. Which of these became its own independent country most recently?
a. Eritrea
b. East Timor
c. Yemen

I sense that wasn't very easy. I did try to drop in clues. Let's see how we did.

Answers:
1-a; 2-c; 3-b; 4-b; 5: Greece, 1820s; Balkans, 1870s; Levant, 1910s-20s; 6-b; 7-c; 8-a; 9-a; 10: Guinea = French West Africa; Madagascar = Malagasy Republic; Ghana = Gold Coast; Burkina Faso = Upper Volta; 11-false; 12-b.

Notes:
1. An easy won for the Brits.
2. A gettable-to-easy one for the Yanks. This was Ethan Allen and his famous Green Mountain Boys. Vermont means "monts verts," green mountains. John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a poem whose final stanza goes:
Come York or come Hampshire, come traitors or knaves,
If ye rule o'er our land ye shall rule o'er our graves;
Our vow is recorded–our banner unfurled,
In the name of Vermont we defy all the world!
3. Not too hard, I should think.
4. Something I didn't know until today. The inclusion of Bolivar's name was supposed to be a hint that it took place in northern South America, thus, Colombia.
5. Pretty basic history and logic.
6. These are good fake answers.
7. I should think most of you would know this.
8. The "deeply religious local population" was supposed to tip you that it was Iran.
9. This is when Tito split from Stalin. Any of you ever read Milovan Djilas?
10. I'm old enough that the first maps of Africa I remember actually had names like Upper Volta on them. I figure Madagascar/Malagasay was guessable; Ghana as Gold Coast vaguely memorable; Guinea as French deduce-ible; at which point you're home free.
11. Havel was very much opposed, as were majorities of both populations, according to polls. But I guess it's all working out okay.
12. East Timor's very recent (2006) independence from Indonesia was a big deal.

Well, that gave your brain a little workout, I think. It did mine. Tell us how you did and share with us any esoteric knowledge you have on the topic. Hope you enjoyed.

United StatesMichael Tomasky
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The UN, and the bombing begins | Michael Tomasky

So the strikes will begin soon. I guess one has to say that this sort of thing is pretty much what the UN was created for. The 10-0 vote and the backing of the Arab League, taken so far as we know of its own volition, do show a genuinely multilateral and international approach to dealing with crisis.

Contrast this most obviously with Iraq, when it was clear that the US was going in (Bush still lies about this point, even in Decision Points, which is patently ridiculous, but he has to lie about it because to tell the truth suddenly after years of maintaining this crucial lie would destroy whatever vestigial credibility he retains). And when we bullied and browbeat other Security Council members into voting with us. And at least Obama isn't running around and making a humiliating spectacle of himself by bragging about the Marshall Islands being involved.

Contrast it even with the Persian Gulf War. There, Bush Sr. and Jim Baker did a somewhat more honest job of rounding up international support. And Iraq did after all in that instance invade a sovereign country (albeit one that was evidently taking some of its oil, a point many people forget these days). But even there, you felt Bush, a recession president whose numbers were flimsy at the time, wanted a good little winnable war.

This is a war nobody wanted. Well, not nobody. Cameron and Sarkozy wanted it, evidently. I haven't followed them closely enough to know their motivations, but let's face it, it's easy enough for them. In the back of their minds, they always know that if things get messy it's really the United States that will be left holding the bag.

Hussein Ibish writes:

So what changed? I think it's obvious: the Qaddafi regime appeared, in the past 48 hours, to perhaps be on the brink of a decisive victory, potentially pushing into and recapturing Benghazi, the rebel stronghold. If that happened, it would secure its grip on almost all of the country and probably be able to capture or wipe out most of the rebellion's troops and leaders. It is the prospect of this, and this only, that moved the international community so far and so quickly...

...What this means is both simple and profound: it was always coming to this, and the long period of pointless hesitation must now be viewed as a significant and foolish mistake.

I largely agree with the first point, but I respectfully disagree with the second. If the US and Britain and France had tried to ram through a resolution, Bush-style, a month ago, the world would not have been as united as it is right now. That may be putting it mildly. There's a price to the delay, probably, but there would have been a price to swift trilateral aggression too.

The die is cast. The only thing to do now is pray it works. Quiz coming soon, by the way.

United NationsLibyaUS foreign policyMichael Tomasky
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How Michele Bachmann could win (Iowa, anyway) | Michael Tomasky

I told you, didn't I, that Michele Bachmann should be taken seriously. Not as a possible president. That's impossible, at least in the USA. Maybe in the CSA once the disunion occurs.

But she should be taken seriously as a potential candidate who can have a big impact on the GOP race. Here's Ed Kilgore doing just that at TNR, beginning with a comparison with you-know-who:

The parallels between Bachmann and Palin are hard to ignore, up to and including their backgrounds as minor beauty pageant contestants. Both women are politically rooted in the anti-abortion movement, having earned the loyalty of anti-choicers by "walking the walk"—Palin by carrying to term a child with a severe disability, and Bachmann by serving as a foster parent to 23 children (in addition to her own five), plus walking a few abortion clinic picket lines over the years. Both candidates are heroes of the Tea Party movement (Bachmann is the founder of the House Tea Party Caucus). And both have regularly played fast and loose with facts and history, constantly treading the boundary between ideologically loaded viewpoint and sheer ignorance.

But when you put Palin and Bachmann side by side, it is striking how much broader and deeper—in a word, more seriously committed—the Minnesotan's involvement with right-wing causes has actually been. Her signature issue as a Minnesota state senator was fighting same-sex marriage, while Palin made her name as a maverick who fought corruption. Bachmann is the one who organized the borderline-violent demonstrations at the U.S. Capitol just before last year's final vote on health reform, and suggested that Democratic members of Congress be investigated to determine if they were "pro-American" or "anti-American." And Bachmann isn't a casual churchgoer like Palin: She got her law degree from Oral Roberts University (a law school that eventually migrated to Pat Robertson's Regent University); her husband has long run a "Christian family counseling" center; and both Bachmanns once operated a charter school that was accused of serious violation of the principle of church-state separation.

First of all, 23 foster children? Wow. I have to say that is actually admirable. And five of her own. I guess I can cut her a break for not having her history straight all the time. She didn't have much time to read. I see a mother wheeling two kids down the street, I'm impressed. Three humbles me profoundly. Four and up is beyond my comprehension.

Kilgore then explains how she could win the Iowa caucuses:

She could certainly do well in the first-in-the-nation Iowa Caucus, particularly if Mike Huckabee also stays on the sidelines as expected, creating a hunger for a new Christian Right champion in a state where the Christian Right still walks tall. It also helps that she is actually an Iowa native living in next door Minnesota—and it's hugely important that her very closest associate in Congress is influential Iowa Congressman Steve King. As Craig Robinson, an Iowa GOP insider, says about the Bachmann-King combo:

A Bachmann run would create a perfect storm in Iowa. Bachmann is already the darling of the Tea Party. Combine that with King's statewide network of conservative in a caucus election and its bound to befuddle everyone in the beltway as well as her caucus opponents.

Even if Bachmann doesn't win a state outright, she could wreak havoc on the field. Given her fanaticism about root-and-branch repeal of ObamaCare, is there any doubt she would make sure every Caucus-goer knows about RomneyCare? Plus, she represents a deadly threat to the ambitions of her fellow Minnesota Republican, Tim Pawlenty, who has been quietly consolidating a position as likely Republican frontrunner: When she was a state legislator, Bachmann once assaulted a Pawlenty proposal for an enterprise zone, saying it represented Marxist principles.

This all makes sense. Conventional wisdom in these parts lately is that Pawlenty is looking like a good bet to be the GOP nominee. He's the least objectionable to the various factions, and he could steal Minnesota's 10 electoral votes, which are otherwise certain Obama votes. But she makes life a heck of a lot harder for him.

Here, by the way, is a little background on Pawlenty's Marxist proclivities, featuring this fine Bachmann quote on Pawlenty's Tax-Free Zone initiative:

"…it's all for the planned redistribution of wealth which is also stated in this document, the redistribution of wealth which is based on a new concept called equity. And it says this: we must not lose sight of equity, or fairness based on need. Where have you heard that here, today? From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

Polls normally indicate that about half of Americans think that's from the Constitution. She risks alienating a key constituency.

US elections 2012Michele BachmannMichael Tomasky
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