BACHMANN ANNOUNCES – Michele Bachmann formally announces her candidacy for president in her birthplace of Waterloo, Iowa, this morning.

Waterloo, by the way, is famous as the home of the Sullivan boys, the five brothers killed aboard the light cruiser USS Juneau in the South Pacific in World War II. 

We will be watching Bachmann.  Love her or loathe her – and there are plenty on both sides – she's the most fascinating candidate to emerge thus far, very much the Sarah Palin of this campaign.  As much as I like Sarah, I must concede that Michele comes to the party better prepared.  She does her homework. 

Let us also concede that one reason for all the attention she receives is her good looks, which clearly is also the case with Sarah.  I don't know why journalists are so frightened to say that.  Maybe it's the politically correct rigidity of modern journalism.  Looks count, whether they belong to a man or woman.  I recall the Kennedy campaign of 1960, when Kennedy's presumed appeal to women was discussed quite openly, and frequently.  (In fact, the women's vote went for Nixon.  Kennedy is reported to have sighed, when watching teenaged girls jump with joy when he passed, "I wish they were old enough to vote.") 

From Bloomberg:

Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota congresswoman whose attacks on President Barack Obama and his policies made her a favorite of Tea Party activists, pivots from talk to action today as she formally enters the 2012 Republican presidential contest in a state critical to her bid.

Bachmann will begin her campaign in Waterloo, Iowa, the city where she was born and the state where a strong finish in its caucuses would solidify her place as a major challenger to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the frontrunner in polls in the Republican race.

“My focus will be on turning the economy around and job creation,” Bachmann said yesterday on the CBS program “Face the Nation.” Obama, she said, “doesn’t seem to have an understanding of how to do the job.”

The political fire will now start coming at Bachmann.  You may be sure that opposition researchers are hard at work, delving into her past.  I have no doubt that the same people who worked to destroy Sarah Palin are at it again.  Bachmann represents the same kind of threat to their world – she's a pro-life female conservative.

She has much to overcome.  There's a history of gaffes and seemingly over-the-top statements.  Her record, although deeper than Obama's when he ran, is not extensive.  She did well in the New Hampshire debate several weeks ago, but not that well on "Face the Nation" yesterday, in part because of a maddening tendency to evade questions.  She will have to deal directly with verbal challenges.

But she excites people and motivates them, and therefore she's important to this race.  And now I wonder whether Sarah will jump in as well.

June 27, 2011