Just a few months ago, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann’s appointment to the intelligence committee drew mild resistance and private snickering from her Republican colleagues. Now, it’s becoming a central part of the narrative behind a presidential campaign that is quickly gaining steam.
At Monday’s Republican presidential debate, Bachmann flexed her newfound national security credentials: She told the nation that Defense Secretary Robert Gates had been unable to identify a vital national security interest in Libya, and she discussed reports that the Al Qaeda branch in North Africa might be coordinating with the Libyan rebels. In doing so, she demonstrated a facility with national security issues that comes with regular access to high-level secrets.
It was, quite simply, a different Michele Bachmann who emerged on stage at St. Anselm’s College in New Hampshire — a nuanced, focused and polished politician rather than the one-dimensional firebrand she’s been caricatured as in the past. If she is to make a serious run at the presidential nomination, Monday’s debate might be the turning point that gave the GOP establishment a reason to give her a second look.
But Bachmann’s efforts to burnish her security credentials could be a double-edged sword: Talking about her proximity to national secrets gives her a certain cachet difficult for the leading Republicans such as Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty to match, but it also opens up the possibility that she will go too far in sharing what she knows publicly.
For now, she’s wielding the blade effectively.
“I think she did a really good job last night,” House Speaker John Boehner said. “I think she’s a bright member of our caucus; it’s one of the reasons why I appointed her to the intelligence committee.”
Some Republicans say it’s only a matter of time before she implodes, but others think there’s a chance Bachmann has turned a corner.
“Most of the time she’s smart. Then she just goes off,” one House Republican colleague said of her modus operandi in recent years — a pattern that he said is beginning to change. “She practices all the time. Now, she’s starting to get pretty good.”
Bachmann may have justified Boehner’s faith in her abilities, but he wasn’t always so confident. When he appointed her to the committee last December, he made a special point of sitting Bachmann down to warn her that she could not let national secrets slip.
The tea party darling had established herself as a flame-throwing media star, and her colleagues harbored concerns that she would not exercise the discretion required of panel members. In 2007, Bachmann told a Minnesota newspaper she claimed to “know of an Iranian plan for the partition of Iraq in which Iran would control half the country and set it up as ‘a terrorist safe haven zone’ and a staging area for attacks around the Middle East and on the United States.”
“If you’re looking for media and controversy, that’s not the committee to be on,” a Republican familiar with internal discussions about Bachmann’s appointment to the intelligence committee said at the time.
But in less than six months on the panel, she’s earned the confidence of her colleagues on both sides of the aisle, who praise her for showing up to meetings, doing her homework and asking incisive questions.
Bachmann is following a well-worn path for lawmakers who hope to become prominent national political figures. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi served on the intelligence committee, and then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, previously known best for her work on domestic issues, sought a seat on the Armed Services Committee two years into her first term. Now, Clinton is the nation’s top diplomat as President Barack Obama’s secretary of state.
Bachmann’s aspiration for higher office has been an open secret on Capitol Hill for quite some time. And while many viewed her choice of intelligence over a seat on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee as a sign she might run for president, those close to her say there’s a strategy behind her interest in intelligence.
“It’s her interest in national security issues — that’s been something that she’s long been concerned about, and that comes, at least partly, from her concern for her children and her foster children,” a Bachmann spokesman said Tuesday. “She sees intelligence as a way to take an active part in … issues dealing with national security.”
When asked whether there were additional discussions over what Bachmann could and could not talk about as she transitions from lawmaker to presidential candidate, the spokesman said Bachmann took the “inaugural steps that are normal” for any new intel committee member when she received briefings from committee staffers and other members on protocol.
“There haven’t been further discussions about how it would affect the campaign. She fully understands what’s expected of her as a member of the committee and looks forward to continuing to contribute,” the spokesman added.
But leaving a little ambiguity — suggesting she’s got insider knowledge without betraying specific secrets — could benefit Bachmann.
In Monday’s debate, she showed a new balance — reaching out to more establishment Republicans on some issues without alienating her tea party base. She repeatedly connected her work in the backrooms of Congress to positions that play well with the grass roots.
“We were not threatened with attack. There was no vital national interest. I sit on the House Select Committee on Intelligence. We deal with the nation’s vital classified secrets,” Bachmann said. “We to this day don’t yet know who the rebel forces are that we’re helping. There are some reports that they may contain Al Qaeda of North Africa.”
Her performance won praise from all corners of the Republican Party and a broad range of pundits.
“It seemed that the person with the most to gain, Michele Bachmann, gained the most. This was her first debate appearance, and she seemed comfortable and in command of the issues. It was a solid introduction to the nation,” said Mark Meckler, national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots.
Having access to secrets can cut both ways, as Democratic presidential candidates have found in the past.
Both John Edwards and John Kerry served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Kerry’s attendance in public meetings of the panel became a flash point of the 2004 campaign, when George W. Bush accused him of shirking his responsibilities with his low turnout. Kerry at the time said he had participated highly in the closed briefings, but leaders of the panel would not disclose the attendance rolls of the secret gatherings because of committee rules.
And in one of the more iconic moments in presidential campaign history more than a half century ago, then-Sen. John F. Kennedy used the “missile gap” — or the perceived difference in the nuclear arsenals of the United States and the U.S.S.R. — against then-Vice President Richard Nixon, who knew of the overblown nature of the gap but could not respond publicly for reasons of national security.
Maryland Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, top Democrat on the intelligence committee, declined to address Bachmann’s remarks about Libya. But he noted that there are certain kinds of information that can be shared without running afoul of the nation’s security needs — and some that can’t.
“When we go in the intel committee, we’re instructed on what we can say and what we can’t say,” Ruppersberger said. “The most important thing is that we don’t give out sources and methods used by our intelligence agencies that could negatively impact our national security.”
Arizona Sen. John McCain, the GOP’s top man on the Armed Services Committee and the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, said members of Congress don’t get the most sensitive information anyway.
“I’ve never gotten any intelligence briefing, no matter how highly classified, that wasn’t already in the media.”
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