Blow and Collins

One L two Ns is on everyone’s mind this morning.  Mr. Blow, in “Bachmann Bows Out,” says if there’s one thing that Bachmann’s time in Congress has taught him it’s this: Don’t trust anything that comes out of her mouth.  Ms Collins, in “Michele, Here’s the Bell,” says Michele Bachmann says that this will be her last term in Congress. This is truly the end of an era!  Here’s Mr. Blow:

Minnesota’s rhetorical Molotov-cocktail-throwing congresswoman, Michele Bachmann, will not be returning to the House of Representatives. (Pause for applause.)

Bachmann announced, in a rambling 8-minute video posted Tuesday, that she would not seek another term representing Minnesota’s sixth Congressional district.

Bachmann tried to reassure her supporters that she wasn’t bowing out because she was afraid of losing or because of the continuing investigation of her failed presidential campaign by the Office of Congressional Ethics. She said that she came to this decision because, for her, eight years is a logical term limit even though it’s not a legal limit.

Huh. Maybe. Maybe not. But if there’s one thing that Bachmann’s time in Congress has taught me it’s this: Don’t trust anything that comes out of her mouth. I’ll wait for the fact check.

Bachmann had made a place for herself as one of the most divisive, inflammatory, and flat-out dishonorable members of Congress in recent history, and her strong association with the Tea Party (she was the founder of the Tea Party Caucus) has gone a long way toward shaping the group’s image for ill.

Bachmann built her celebrity on being acerbic and excessive, on throwing out accusations that she could not back up, on floating ideas that had no basis in fact. It worked for her, making her a household name and the butt of running jokes.

There seemed to be nothing that she wouldn’t say — and that her supporters wouldn’t applaud her for saying — so long as it was mixed with nationalistic catchphrases like “Constitution,” “founders” and “traditional,” and attacks on the president.

The problem is that much of what she was saying — aside from not making sense — was simply false.

According to PolitiFact, of the 59 statements by Bachmann that the site has checked since 2009, 44 (a whopping 75 percent) were mostly false or worse. A quarter met the criteria for the site’s worst rating: Pants on Fire. Ten percent were deemed half true, seven percent mostly true and only eight percent unambiguously true.

According to The Washington Post fact checker:

“Bachmann is not just fast and loose with the facts; she is consistently and unapologetically so. No other lawmaker earned as high a percentage of four-Pinocchio ratings as Bachmann — and she earned an average of more than three Pinocchios as a presidential candidate.”

Four Pinocchios is The Post’s worst rating.

The Associated Press has said that it had to put a quota on the number of statements by Bachmann that they would fact check during the presidential race, presumably to conserve resources.

And not all of her falsifying and fearmongering were without real victims.

In 2012 she suggested that Huma Abedin, who was at the time deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, might be working on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood to infiltrate the highest levels of our government.

According to a letter from Bachmann: “Her position provides her with routine access to the Secretary and to policy-making.”

This was outrageous, the lowest of low behavior, a witch hunt of the most bitter variety. She was roundly condemned for that accusation, including by her onetime campaign manager, who wrote of the congresswoman on the Fox News Web site:

“I am fully aware that she sometimes has difficulty with her facts, but this is downright vicious and reaches the late Senator Joe McCarthy level.”

That is Bachmann’s problem: she can be downright vicious and she seems to have little regard for honesty.

In Bachmann’s announcement video she said:

“I fully anticipate the mainstream, liberal media to put a detrimental spin on my decision not to seek a fifth term. And since I was first elected to Congress many years ago, they always seem to attempt to find a dishonest way to disparage me.”

Spare me! Stop trying to play the victim pre-emptively. Bachmann has used dishonesty to disparage too many of her political foes during her time in Congress. They’re the victims.

Bachmann has set a new standard, found down by the ankles, for the level to which an elected official should aspire. She has willfully bent the truth like a hurricane bends a sapling. This is behavior not becoming of a congresswoman. This has sullied her seat and the institution.

Hopefully, with her stint coming to an end, we will move one step closer to something she seemed to have utter contempt for: the truth.

And now here’s Ms. Collins:

If Michele Bachmann leaves Congress, does that mean the end of the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act? That was pretty much my favorite Michele Bachmann piece of legislation.

“President Bachmann will allow you to buy any light bulb you want,” she had vowed during her campaign for the 2012 Republican nomination. Nobody got into the issue of repressive lighting efficiency standards in quite the same way.

That presidential race was pretty much the peak of Bachmann’s career. Remember her high point, when she swept to victory in the Iowa straw poll? Which was followed by the low point of coming in sixth in the actual Iowa caucuses. And calls for the abolition of future straw polls.

Now it’s all over, apparently. On Wednesday, while touring Russia and unavailable for comment, Bachmann released a video announcing that she would not run for re-election in 2014.

“I will continue to work vehemently and robustly to fight back against what most in the other party want to do, to transform our country into becoming. Which would be a nation that our founders would hardly even recognize today,” Bachmann told the nation. As only she could.

Her announcement had a strange, perky quality that drew instant comparisons to airline safety videos. Although it went on for more than eight minutes, Bachmann was vague about several critical points, such as why she was quitting. She was far more specific about what was not propelling her out. Definitely not the fact that the guy who nearly beat her last time around has announced that he is running again. And totally for sure not reports that the F.B.I. is investigating her campaign finances.

“My future is full, it is limitless, and my passions for America will remain,” she said over cheery background music. She could very easily have been telling us that in case of loss of cabin pressure, we should put on our own oxygen mask before aiding other passengers.

So farewell to Michele Bachmann, a politician who had a great faith in average folks — readily quoting their opinions to the nation as if the information had just emerged from the labs of M.I.T. A woman at a debate complained that a vaccine against H.P.V. caused mental retardation, and Bachmann instantly announced the news on network TV. Ditto with the inside scoop from a Japanese man who assured her that in his home country, people who criticize the government aren’t allowed to get health care.

In honor of her departure, Michele-watchers around the country rolled out their favorite Bachmann quotes. Mine was her contention that the theory of evolution was disputed by “hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes.”

We may not see her like again. Or, if one shows up, we may decide not to pay attention.

A long-running adieu (she’s not really going away until the end of 2014) to a woman who worships the founding fathers — who, she once informed a Republican crowd, started off the Revolution with a shot “heard round the world” in New Hampshire. Patriots like Washington, Jefferson and Madison, who would never have wanted to live in an America where there were census forms or high-protein cafeteria meals. (“Where in the #Constitution does it say the fed. government should regulate potatoes in school lunches?” she Twittered.)

The most interesting question about Bachmann is how she and Sarah Palin came to be the two most high-profile women in the Tea Party. Neither one has ever had a real political organization. Palin didn’t like being governor enough to finish the term. Bachmann has been a terrible legislator. Women in Congress tend to be good at working with others. Michele Bachmann is good at talking on her cellphone during meetings.

They certainly have intense personalities. But you have to wonder if the secret is that, by political standards, they both look extremely hot. And if it’s their appearance that made them such stars, is that for the benefit of the Tea Party men or the Tea Party women? Ronnee Schreiber, a professor at San Diego State University, who studies gender and politics, says the women in the grass-roots Tea Party she’s interviewed kept focusing on how the pair “looked so feminine and dressed so ladylike.”

Whatever Bachmann’s secret, it isn’t really working anymore. Her career jumped the shark when she and a few colleagues demanded that one of Hillary Clinton’s top aides be investigated as a possible Muslim extremist trying to infiltrate the government. The aide, Huma Abedin, is married to former Congressman Anthony Weiner, and I think I speak for the entire country when I say the poor woman has enough problems to deal with in the real world.

Meanwhile, the Tea Party caucus Bachmann founded in the House has lost its traction. In the Senate, right-wing newcomers like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have captured the limelight from the congresswoman from Minnesota who once won the Iowa straw poll.

And sponsored the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act. Can’t forget about that.