Bachmann's Memoir Critical Of Both Bush And Obama
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann will release a memoir on Monday recounting her journey from state senator to presidential candidate.
In the book, which bears the title "Core of Conviction,"
Bachmann describes herself as a deeply religious and conservative "accidental politician."
She says she was forced into politics by fellow Republicans who compromised their beliefs.
In its pages, Bachmann is critical of former President George Bush, whose actions to save the economy she called "bailout socialism."
"The Bush administration, which had always professed faith in the free-market system, was now reversing its course," Bachmann wrote.
As a Minnesota state senator in the ealry 1990s, Bachmann considered herself a conservative loner.
Bachmann also recounted her family struggles when her parents divorced. She wrote on moving to Anoka, working different jobs as a teen, including a summer as nanny for Gretchen Carlson, who is now a FOX News anchor. She also wrote about her marriage to Marcus and her growing family.
Bachmann also wrote that she once considered herself a Democrat, saying that she even attended the inauguration of former President Jimmy Carter. But she said she became disillusioned with Carter.
"Carter kept trying to blame us, the American people, for his self made problems," she wrote.
Voting enthusiastically for Ronald Reagan in 1980, Bachmann said Carter taught her what she was against and Reagan taught her what she was for.
Bachmann's up-close appraisal of leading Republican politicians is revealing. She called former President Bush the opposite of egocentric and described Dick Cheney as serious and lacking in humor. She called Sarah Palin charming and charismatic. And guess how she described John Boehner, the Republican Speaker with whom she has often clashed?
When he lit a cigarette during a campaign trip to Minnesota on her behalf, Bachmann said he reminded her of "the TV singer and movie star Dean Martin."
Bachmann spends considerable time defending herself as a victim of unfair treatment by a liberal media in 2006. She devotes many pages of her 207-page memoir to MSNBC's Chris Matthews and his aggressive interviewing style.
"I've learned the hard way at the national level that any erroneous statement will very quickly be magnified," wrote Bachmann, who has made news for a number of gaffes on the campaign trail.
"So, as someone who talks for a living, I've learned to check, double-check and triple-check my sources. And yet I still make a mistake or two."
But her sharpest criticism was aimed at President Barack Obama. She said his new health care bill is immoral and called his administration a gangster government – one that is driving America into a third-world lifestyle.
She said his stimulus programs sent money to "big city liberal mayors, the Saul Alinsky nostalgists, the ACORN activists, the taxpayer-subsidy-dependent-green-jobs propagandists, and all the other moochers, hustlers and rent seekers demanding a 'place at the table' when liberals control the White House."
Bachmann will sign copies of her new book at the Mall of America on the day after Thanksgiving.
