People Always Say…
By Mitch Berg
…that they are tired of politicians who “act like politicians” – who calculate everything they say to a fine, calibrated sheen, in order not to lose a single vote.
And then you encounter the exceptions – and you realize why so many politicians do measure what they say so very very carefully.
Paul Wellstone was one of them; he pretty much shot from the hip and said whatever his heart put on his sleeve. He was, of course, so thoroughly in tune with the the Minnesota mainstream media’s “Wish I coulda been at Woodstock” id that it never really cost him.
And then there’s Michele Bachmann. A woman who proves the old saying “when a lefty calls you “crazy”, it’s their way of saying “you’re smarter than me” [*], she’s also the exact opposite of a Tim Pawlenty or a Norm Coleman; as I discussed almost three years back, if Coleman and Pawlenty are like political engineers, calculating out all their angles so that they don’t spring any rhetorical gusset plates and get dumped in the political river, then Michele Bachmann is like a jazz saxophonist, improvising, sometimes without a net. When it works, it works, like Dizzy Gillespie improvising around a theme. And when it doesn’t? Gillespie used to repeat sour notes a few times, to make it seem intentional; in jazz, it works. In politics?
Enh.
At the last Republican debate, Bachmann mentioned some unfortunate claimed outcomes from Governor Perry’s HPV vaccination campaign.
A couple of medical ethicists picked up on that statement, and theatrically demanded the details.
Mr. D from Mr. Dilettante’s Neighborhood found some irony in that:
I would assume that [the ethicists] both understand that releasing medical records is a dicey proposition, given the strictures involved. And it’s hardly surprising that the news media aren’t mentioning that these two ethicists are asking for a course of action that would be considered unethical. Would the parent of a child really consent to havving their child’s medical history splashed across the airwaves and the internet? Would you?
Not sure I’d want it mentioned in a speech, either, but there are different levels of intrusiveness involved here – some of them with legal implications.
But Mr. D. seems to have had that same feeling I got, too:
Having said that, Bachmann is wrong, wrong, wrong about vaccinations. The anti-vaccination folks are playing a dangerous game and Bachmann was exceptionally foolish to play along in the hopes of gaining a temporary political advantage over her rival, Rick Perry. Whether Perry’s approach to the matter was wise or not is tangential to the larger point, which is that vaccinations have greatly improved public health and saved the lives of millions of people.
To be fair, I don’t think Bachmann was playing to the “anti-vaccination” people so much as the “I’ll see to own kids’ vaccinations without any of your executive-ordering, thank yoiu very much” crowd.
Not that the left or media (pardon the redundancy) will help distinguish the two.
[*] OK, it’s not an “old saying”. I made it up. But I don’t think it’s especially inaccurate.
September 16th, 2011 at 12:44 pm
the correct link is: http://mrdilettante.blogspot.com/2011/09/bachmanns-overreach.html
September 16th, 2011 at 1:03 pm
It’s funny that today the closest thing we have in Minnesota to Wellstone (in the manner of speaks own mind, damn the consequences to party/elections) is Bachmann. I mentioned this to a Liberal friend who went full auto and harangued me for ten minutes about how that couldn’t possibly true.
The anti-vaccine crowd is dumb – or at least ignorant – like keeping others from climbing up the ladder out of the primordial slime. That said – I chafe at the goverment diktats regarding vaccines, salt, red dye #2 (remember that one?), coffee, etc. As a listener wrote to NPR regarding their report on anti-vaccine folks (my paraphrase) “I have a masters in science and know the life saving wonder that vaccines have brought. But I also resent the “we’re from the government, do this or else we take your kid away” mentality many public health professionals display. Let me read the material, the testing, the risks and the rewards of a vaccine prior to your imposing it on my kid.”
September 16th, 2011 at 2:33 pm
People have conveniently forgotten that there have been some past anti-vaccine campaigns that got enough traction to factor in the creation of a reporting system (VAERS) in 1986. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_Adverse_Event_Reporting_System
The culprits at the time were the pertussis (whooping cough) component of DPT vaccine. A few years later, the first version of the HIB vaccine caused a number of serious injuries and deaths because it created a window of vulnerability to the infection.
If you wonder why vaccines cost so much, it’s because of the liability expense factored into the manufacturing process, even though VAERS was supposed to provide for a fund to compensate “victims” of bad outcomes. More and more companies got out of the vaccine business because they didn’t fancy defending themselves in court all the time. This of course increases the cost because of market forces.
Michelle Bachmann didn’t invent anti-vaccine hysteria. I deplored what she said because I don’t think she can back it up with facts. I am positive if there were adverse reactions to Gardasil, there’d be hundreds of claims, and there aren’t. People are not shy about hiding medical records when they have a malpractice attorney egging them on.
I have met plenty of parents with a leftist views who don’t immunize their kids because of unfounded worries. It’s an issue that crosses party lines. Naturally, if the kids get sick, they want only the best medical care even though they passed on the simplest solution (prevention.)
September 16th, 2011 at 2:37 pm
Thanks, Mitch.
To be fair, I don’t think Bachmann was playing to the “anti-vaccination” people so much as the “I’ll see to own kids’ vaccinations without any of your executive-ordering, thank yoiu very much” crowd.
Not that the left or media (pardon the redundancy) will help distinguish the two.
Right. In fact, they have spent the entire week trying to conflate the two things, which are separate issues.
September 16th, 2011 at 3:39 pm
To be fair, I don’t think Bachmann was playing to the “anti-vaccination” people so much as the “I’ll see to own kids’ vaccinations without any of your executive-ordering, thank yoiu very much” crowd.
I’m kind of torn on that (not on whether the vaccination should be mandated – it shouldn’t). There has been a continuous stream of attacks on vaccinations by claiming (without scientific merit) that it’s linked to autism and a number of politicians (such as our former Attorney General Mike Hatch) who have played to that crowd with the oh-so cute “I’m not saying it has but we don’t really know for sure” line of nonsense.
An anecdote of an anonymous woman claiming that her daughter in effect suffered brain damage because of a vaccine is a little close to that kind of tactic to be ignored. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t but Bachmann reiterated the story to get a political advantage and she reaps the blowback as well.
September 18th, 2011 at 1:20 pm
The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program is a federal program established in 1986. Whether a specific problem was caused by a particular vaccine is debatable; whether vaccines can and do cause injuries but we will force your kid to have them anyway is not, that’s official government policy.
Bachmann reasonably asks: should it be?
Why is that nuts?
.
September 19th, 2011 at 9:05 am
Mitch- Bachmann didn’t say this during the debate nor did she say it in a speech as you state above in your post…she said it on The Today Show. There is a difference. Here’s what she said:
“I had a mother last night come up to me here in Tampa, Fla., after the debate,” Bachmann said on the Today show this morning. “She told me that her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection, and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter. It can have very dangerous side effects. The mother was crying when she came up to me last night. I didn’t know who she was before the debate. This is a very real concern and people have to draw their own conclusions.”
There are indeed very dangerous side effects http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/vaccines/hpv/gardasil.html
I disagree that Pawlenty is an engineer constructing arguments…if he was he would have never backed off his global warming claims and would have proudly defended alternative energy mandates that he pushed for…If he would have gone after Romney instead of Bachmann, he’d still be in the race. They have two totally different bases.
Perry’s response that what Michele actually said at the debate was very similiar to Pawlenty’s when she hit him with his climate change mandates…it was “Who, me?”
I was really dumbfounded listening to your show on Saturday with the claim that “Jobs and the Economy” are the only things that Republicans should talk about 14 months before an election. Of course that is- always- the #1 issue. Michele’s fearless fight against Obamacare which represents 1/6 of the US economy and the end of freedom as we know it- is why I’m attracted to her campaign. But I have fears and worries about my children’s future that goes beyond the fact that they may only be able to work or the government. Little things like the idea that gender no longer has a definition and marriage is no longer viewed as necessary to have children. Should the Republican party just say “chuck it” and not even talk about social issues/cultural issues? Why don’t we just have a party platform then that says “Jobs, Economy, Fiscal” (but we still don’t cut spending)
That said, I fear that Perry’s obvious compassionate conservatism will be a big turn-off in the general election “Been there, done that.” The Gardisil mandate (with EXTREME measures to opt-out) is only one of his weaknesses. The DREAM ACT is the one I’d like to talk about next.
I also hope Michele punches just as hard against Romney’s global warming/Green Republicanism and penchant for mandates as well.
Now is not the time to tamp down on any debate on our values and “get on board.” That time is immediately following the convention and that’s what Republicans do. That’s what I’ll do.
September 19th, 2011 at 2:21 pm
The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program is a federal program established in 1986. Whether a specific problem was caused by a particular vaccine is debatable; whether vaccines can and do cause injuries but we will force your kid to have them anyway is not, that’s official government policy.
Bachmann reasonably asks: should it be?
Why is that nuts?
I think the reason that Bachmann is being criticized for her comments is that there are people who don’t get their children vaccinated because of stories of vaccines causing autism and by recounting a story of an anonymous mother whose daughter supposedly suffered mental retardation as a result of this particular vaccine, Bachmann is seen as playing on those fears. If she’d stuck with her criticism of Perry trying to do this through an executive order rather than the Legislature or even made a principled argument why this particular vaccination should not be mandated, she’d be okay.
Instead this comment along with her suggestion that Perry was motivated by a desire to get a whopping $5000 contribution from Merck was an unforced error that damaged her credibility at a time when her campaign was already in trouble.