On the campaign trail in Iowa, Rep. Michele Bachmann's response to the argument that she lacks the experience to run for president has been to turn the argument on its head. The Minnesota congresswoman rattles off her resume: She was a federal tax litigation attorney; she and her husband started "a successful small company"; she fought the establishment in the state Legislature and Congress. And one more thing: Lest you think she doesn't have the brains to do battle with Obama, she rattles off her degrees. "I'm not only a lawyer, I have a postdoctorate degree in federal tax law from William and Mary," she told Fox News' Chris Wallace in June. "I work in serious scholarship."
But there was one résumé item that was missing: a Ph.D. Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when Bachmann traveled the state as an education activist, she went by "Dr. Michele Bachmann," even though she had never obtained nor sought the advanced degree that's a prerequisite for the title.
From 1998 through 2003, Bachmann was a leading opponent of a Minnesota curriculum standard called the Profile of Learning. She and her allies believed that it was leading Minnesota toward a state-planned economy; if we weren't careful, totalitarianism (or worse) could be just around the corner. "Government is implementing policies that will lead to poverty, not prosperity, by adopting the failed ideas of a state- planned and managed economy similar to that of the former Soviet Union," she explained in a policy paper she cowrote for an anti-Profile nonprofit called the Maple River Education Coalition (MREC). "The system is based upon a utilitarian worldview that measures human value only in terms of productive capability for the 'best interests of the state.'"
Along with a local education activist named Michael Chapman, she toured the state and the nation to drum up opposition to state and federal education standards. And according to eyewitness accounts and material put out by the group, she picked up an advanced degree along the way.
Mary Cecconi, a Minnesota education lobbyist who handed Bachmann her only defeat in a 1999 Stillwater school board race, recalls seeing the future presidential candidate speak at an area church shortly after that election. "Chapman was supposed to be the headliner, but there was no question that she was the star," she said. "He was supposed to be the researcher. She was supposed to be the one who focused on the legal aspect—actually that was the first time I'd ever heard someone with a J.D. called a 'doctor.'" Bachmann's 2002 anti-Profile film, Guinea Pig Kids, likewise twice identified the then- state senator as "Dr. Michele Bachmann."
Click for Full Text!
