She leaves Congress, she said in her last floor speech, “the same person I always was” — a self-described former housewife from the burbs of the Twin Cities who listens to the Big Guy, speaks for the little guy, and tells the truth as she sees it. Which is not to say that she hasn’t changed her mind a time or two.
Before she got here, for instance, “I thought members of Congress were a bunch of boozing, skirt-chasing slackers.” Whereas now, she feels they “tend to be smarter than people think. They work harder, and their integrity is a lot higher. I respect most members. Some I don’t, but most I do.”
She herself jokes that she’s not sure who’s happiest to see her move on—Pelosi or the leader of her own caucus, House Speaker John Boehner. Despite her red red rhetoric, she does, she insists, have friends across the aisle: Former congresswoman and current senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, was one of the first lawmakers with whom she bonded, even if once any member moves from the House to the Senate “you never see them again.” She likewise considers Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois a girlfriend. “We talk about everything under the sun.”…
Tinier than she looks on television, Bachmann often pulls her hair up and twists it around her hand as she talks. A tax lawyer who started a business with her husband, “I always felt liberated,’’ she says, and clasps her hands behind her head. Yet at times in the House, she added, she has felt “discounted. I don’t know if that’s the right word, and I don’t say that to castigate any of the men here; they don’t try not to listen to us” even if that is what happens. She decided a long time ago that she’d rather find a way around problems than “gripe about them.” But in this case, she said, “I haven’t completely done that yet.”
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