Michelle Goldberg has a pretty great piece on Michele Bachmann over at The Daily Beast. Among other things, the article provides a nice potted history of Bachmann's political and ideological development, exploring in detail the "intellectual" foundation of the radical Christian worldview that she picked up while studying law at Oral Roberts, and includes a few juicy anecdotal nuggets such as this one:

A few dozen people showed up at the town hall for the April 9 event, and Bachmann greeted them warmly. But when, during the question and answer session, the topic turned to gay marriage, Bachmann ended the meeting 20 minutes early and rushed to the bathroom. Hoping to speak to her, Arnold and another middle-aged woman, a former nun, followed her. As Bachmann washed her hands and Arnold looked on, the ex-nun tried to talk to her about theology. Suddenly, after less than a minute, Bachmann let out a shriek. "Help!" she screamed. "Help! I'm being held against my will!"

 More importantly, though, the piece serves as a useful corrective to a lot of the reporting on Bachmann that's come out since her supposed "break-out" performance at Monday's Republican Presidential "debate" in New Hampshire. Nearly every report, response, scorecard, and take-away published by a mainstream, inside-the-beltway news organ in the aftermath of that farcical dog and pony show has pimped the same basic narrative: "Romney looked good because no one went after him, Tim Pawlenty fell on his face because he refused to go after Romney, and Michele Bachmann emerged as a surprisingly serious contender." The line of thinking here seems to be that because Pawlenty disappointed, and because Bachmann didn't go all crazy eyes and start shrieking about a radical gay Muslim conspiracy or whatever, she has now effectively made the transition from "quack running a hopeless vanity campaign" to "real candidate," effectively positioning herself as a "serious" right-wing, Evangelical alternative to milquetoast, moderate, Mormon Mitt.

What's most dispiriting about these pieces is the fact that none of them go to any great lengths to call bullshit on Bachmann's new act, choosing instead to simply praise her "reasonable, measured" performance and exalt her savviness. But the Michele Bachmann who appeared on stage at St. Anselm College on Monday is, in fact, the same Michele Bachmann who once hid behind some bushes to spy on a gay rights rally in DC, the same Michele Bachmann who once called for the media to conduct an investigation into the "anti-American" activities of Congressional Democrats, and the same Michele Bachmann who once said, "Literally, if we took away the minimum wage — if conceivably it was gone — we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.” The only difference between the "sane and reasonable" Michele Bachmann who burst onto the scene this week and the lunatic who was (rightfully) pegged as being laughably unelectable when she first started making noises about running for President is that Bachmann Mk II has a seasoned team of crack political advisers who have no doubt told her that if she wants to have a shot she'll have to tone down the wild-eyed nuttiness just a tad. 

Unfortunately, the narrative that has emerged in the last week has not been "Crazy lady pretends to be level-headed, reasonable, serious Presidential candidate," but rather "Michele Bachmann is now a serious Presidential candidate." This, sadly, is the sort of thing that happens when you have a press corps that tends to be more interested in the construction of over-arching campaign narratives (and meta-narratives, and meta-meta-narratives) than it is in actually looking at candidates critically. Bachmann and her team seem to have caught on to this tendency and are currently exploiting it for all it's worth. I still kind of doubt that she actually has what it takes to topple the Romney juggernaut, but the odds have now swung ever so slightly in her favor. She may still be a million miles away, but Michele Bachmann is closer to the White House today than she was a week ago, and that alone is sort of terrifying.