Yet as one door was closing, another was opening. In late 2004, I was enjoying a Christmas party with the great people of my state senate district when a colleague approached me and whispered that U.S. representative Mark Kennedy, my congressman, was seriously thinking of vacating his House seat and running for the U.S. Senate the following year. Did I want to go for it? I hadn’t thought about running for Congress, and, frankly, my first thoughts were negative. Spend two years running for a seat that lasts for two years? I shared the news with Marcus, and we talked about it, and then prayed over the possibility. After a while, we both had a confidence that I should offer my candidacy.
And so my time in the state senate was drawing to a close. In my six years in St. Paul, I had learned that some people in politics are selfless, self-sacrificing, and, above all else, will do the right thing. I thanked those wonderful colleagues for standing up and doing what’s right for the people they serve. Yet I also saw some politicians who will wiggle and waffle, seeking to hide the truth about what they are doing from the people who are paying their salaries. That’s the bad news. Yet the good news—and it is very good news—is that the people of Minnesota, when given all the information they need, will push those same politicians in the right direction, or they will elect new representatives who will listen to them. It is those folks who will always renew my faith in our system of governance.
CHAPTER TEN
George W. Bush, Karl Rove—and My Gloves
I announced my bid to serve the people of the 6th congressional district of Minnesota on February 14, 2006, Valentine’s Day. It was a tough race in a tough year for Republicans. Perhaps most notably, the war in Iraq was not going well. President Bush had not yet launched the surge that turned the military situation around and made General David Petraeus a national hero. In addition, it’s sad to say, Americans had the feeling that the Republicans then ruling Congress had grown smug and complacent—too tolerant of pork-barrel overspending and, even worse, too tolerant of bad behavior by some of their own members.
Meanwhile, in Minnesota, my opponent was a woman named Patty Wetterling. Years earlier, Patty’s son Jacob had been abducted and presumably tragically murdered in St. Joseph, Minnesota. It was a shocking crime that gripped the people of our state; Patty quite rightly became a high-profile advocate for child safety. So from a political point of view, she had advantages going into the race; she enjoyed high name awareness and, of course, the prayers and sympathy of all Minnesotans. Meanwhile, I had a voting record and a history of actively working to advance conservative causes in St. Paul. I would have done it all over again, of course, but I was resigned to my opponent’s large fund-raising advantage.
But what I was not resigned to was losing the election. This would be a battle about the future, about which one of us could best represent the views of the people of the 6th district in the halls of Congress. I believed I could best do the job.
So even as Congressional Quarterly handicapped the race as having “no clear favorite,” I thought I would prevail if I did what I had been doing since 2000—that is, speaking out boldly while mobilizing activists and persuading the persuadable. My confidence was fortified when the national Democratic Party announced that it was targeting our 6th district specifically. I knew that if the choice could be made clear—between commonsense conservatism and the ideological liberalism of Nancy Pelosi and my opponent—well, I was confident I knew where my friends and neighbors in the 6th stood on such a choice.
Still, I had a campaign to run. Campaigning can be a chore, although it’s a chore that I love. I love talking to people and getting into important issues and concerns. I believe too that every person here on earth is created in the image of God, and so it’s my duty to respect all others; I try to be kind to people, to share with them, to learn from them. It’s true, of course, that disputes and arguments will arise, but I try to live by the Golden Rule; in politics, that means I should disagree without being disagreeable. I like to think I can attack the policy without attacking the person. Sometimes I have fallen short of that goal, and when I do, I try to make amends, even as I resolve to do better.
Another element of campaigning, of course, is raising money. And by now, thankfully, I was receiving funding help from the National Republican Congressional Committee. In fact, during the 2006 campaign, I received a fund-raising boost from the number one Republican in the nation, President George W. Bush.
On August 22, 2006, the president came to the Twin Cities to speak at a conference on health care during the day—and to do a fund-raiser for me that night. Minnesota supporters are very generous, and my race was no exception. We held the fund-raising event at the former Pillsbury home on the shores of Lake Minnetonka, about fifteen miles west of Minneapolis; it was the perfect setting for a presidential visit.
For my part, I was confronting another question—what to wear! I figured I would just wear a business suit, but my mother was adamant: I had to look nice. And in her mind, that meant dressing like a lady would have in the 1940s or 1950s—that is, all dolled up. I listened to my mother; that’s what a dutiful daughter always does. Yet even so, I figured I could look nice on the cheap. So I went to Herberger’s department store and found a deeply discounted after-Easter dress and jacket. It was a pink suit, including a matching pink purse, and pink shoes. My mother insisted if I was to meet the president, I’d have to have pink gloves as well—no exceptions! And so I had the gloves, too.
Dressed to exacting motherly standards, I went off to meet the president at a suburban hotel. I was escorted into a holding room, where I met Karl Rove and other White House staffers. Then a hush fell—the president was entering the room. In these situations, there’s a receiving line; in this instance, it was strictly all Republican: Governor Tim Pawlenty and Senator Norm Coleman, along with Congressman Jim Ramstad, who represented the western suburbs of Minneapolis, and Congressman Mark Kennedy, whose seat I was attempting to fill as he ran for the U.S. Senate.
The men were prepared: They were all much cannier than I about what to do when they had a moment of the president’s time. They had brought along with them things for the president to sign, including cookbooks, baseballs, and photographs. I didn’t think to ask for an autograph!
When the president passed by me, I had nothing to offer except a sincere handshake. I took my glove off, and he took my hand in a firm grip, saying, “I’ll see you later.” That is, he and I—and several hundred others—had a “date” at Lake Minnetonka that afternoon. Yet he and Karl Rove knew, and I didn’t, that I would be seeing him even sooner than that.
After the receiving line, we were ushered into the hotel ballroom, heading toward a section of reserved seats in front. I was certainly interested in what the president had to say about health-care policy, but because there’s always downtime during such events, I am never without a book; you never know when you can squeeze in a few moments for reading. And that day, the book I had brought with me was Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, detailing Lincoln’s stormy but productive relationship with his cabinet during the Civil War. I was just diving into the historical tale when Karl Rove came up to me and said, “You have to get rid of the book.”
“Why?” I asked. “It’s really good.”
Rove answered: “I know—I read it. But the president is going to be speaking.”
Oh, I thought, don’t worry, I won’t be reading when the president is speaking. I would never be disrespectful.
He was smiling but stern: “You need to hand it over.” We went back and forth, but eventually, I gave him the book. And Karl was right: If I had been photographed reading a book at any time during the event, the nuance of exactly when I was reading would have been lost. Some detractor would have been only too happy to “report” that I was so bored by the president that I had pulled out a book. And that would have hurt both the president and my election prospects. It was not the last he
lpful thing that Karl would do for me that day.
Just before the conference ended, he came back and said, “Come with me—you’re going to ride with the chief in the limousine.”
“You’re kidding!” I said, not exactly curbing my enthusiasm. The original plan had been for Marcus and the kids to come and pick me up at the hotel in our well-used Ford Eclipse van. But now, I learned, I would be riding with the president. So as I walked with Karl to the garage where the limo waited, I called Marcus and told him I had an alternative plan, and he should meet me at the home on Lake Minnetonka.
So there I was in a big underground garage, standing in my pink suit, wearing my pink gloves, next to a giant black presidential limousine, a few Secret Service agents eyeing me coolly. I hate to risk challenging the authority of armed men, but I figured that the agents wouldn’t mind if I rapped my knuckles on the thick metal, just to see what the vehicle felt like. Sure enough, it was more like a tank than a car. I circled the car a few times and thought, What an amazing ride this will be. It had those presidential flags on the hood, and soon I would see it from the inside.
The president strode out to the waiting car, along with the governor, Senator Coleman, and Rove. The president sat in the rear seat on the right, and Rove, using a few quick gestures, assigned the rest of us to our seats. To my surprise, Rove pointed me to the backseat to the left of the president, while Coleman and Pawlenty, along with Karl, took their places on a bench seat facing the president—and me. For a girl from Waterloo, Iowa, this was a heady experience. I kept telling myself: Remember everything, Michele, so that you can tell the kids. The presidential seal was embroidered into the leather seat; I thought, This isn’t as large as I thought it would be.
The next thing I knew, we were zipping through the cordoned-off streets, part of a grand motorcade, sirens blaring. Rove reached into a compartment and handed the president a plastic bottle of water, and then one to each of the rest of us. The bottles were room temperature. The president looked at me and said, “Room temperature water is healthier.” And from that day on, I have taken the lead from the commander in chief!
As we rode along, we talked first about casual topics, including dogs. The president joked that Barney, the black Scottish terrier, couldn’t make the trip; the first pooch, the commander in chief kidded, was a good dog and needed to mind the store. And we all agreed that we missed Spot, the English springer spaniel who had passed a few years earlier.
The president demonstrated amazing energy despite his nearly six years in office, prosecuting the war on terror on so many fronts. He was stoic and obviously strong. And when the discussion shifted from dogs to kids and family, he grew more reflective; he recalled the moment decades before when his wife, Laura, now the first lady, had issued him an ultimatum: “It’s either Jack Daniel’s or me.” George W. Bush chose wisely, and so he was able to begin his career in leadership.
I also saw how the president consistently thought of others. He was an eminently decent man. He made a point to look for every person he could spot along the motorcade route. People would wait for hours to get a glimpse of the car, so the president paid attention in order to wave at every person along the motorcade route that he could; he wanted them to know that he saw them and recognized them. The president was kind, affable—the opposite of egocentric. This event, and his presidency, was not about himself; it was about the people he served. In the brief time we spent together, I learned a lot about the character of the man. As an aside, several years earlier, Barbara Bush, the former first lady, had come to campaign in Minnesota for Senator Rod Grams. Barbara Bush was not only kind in person, but was also an excellent speaker and campaigner. Obviously very intelligent and possessed of a quick wit, both Barbara and former president George H. W. Bush had done a great job in parenting their children.
The president was a good listener. He paid careful attention to each of us and then responded thoughtfully. Speaking of thoughtful, he looked down at my pink-gloved hands and asked with a crinkly smile: “Why are you wearing those gloves?” I explained and he said gently, “Lose the gloves.” I could see Rove agreed. I slipped the gloves off, and the conversation turned to fishing.
Then, still short of our destination, we stopped. I looked out the window and saw a popular roadside frozen-custard stand. Rove looked at me and said, “Hop out.” The Secret Service already had the president out of the car as Karl continued, “We’re stopping here to do a photo op—for you!”
Once again, Rove’s judgment was right. Ah, yes, the leader of the free world and his friend, hopefully-to-be-congresswoman Michele Bachmann, were getting frozen custard on their way to an important event. Because of this stop, the 10:00 P.M. news story was not the president and local politicians at a fancy fund-raiser; it would be me and the president having fun with a local summertime crowd and teenage employees while enjoying a frozen treat. The fund-raiser had been no secret, of course, but now we would be in the news three times, once for custard, once for the health-care forum, and then for the fund-raising visit. And although I was still all dressed up, at least I wasn’t wearing—thanks to the president’s good counsel—those over-the-top gloves.
So now we were out of the car: the president, then me, all surrounded by Secret Service agents, making our way through a startled crowd of gawking custard snackers. Soon reporters, tagging along in their own vehicles, pulled up, cameras in hand. The president and I reached the order window at the same time, and we both ordered vanilla. I love chocolate, but this was not the time to risk a bad stain. I realized I didn’t have any cash with me; my wallet wouldn’t fit in my tiny purse, and all I had was a slim little credit card. Fortunately, the president gave me some cash, thoughtful and considerate always.
Back in the car, I handed my custard to Karl and in no time we were at the former Pillsbury mansion. We pulled up into a tent put up by the Secret Service, so that no possible sniper could have a clear line of sight at the president. That was a sobering reminder that the president was at risk wherever he went; the low-key heroes of Secret Service had the challenging task of keeping him safe.
Inside, the hosts had made just one request of me. They hoped that the president would sign their leather-bound guest book. After all, there was some Bush history to that house; decades before, the forty-third president’s father, as a young man, had spent a weekend here with his then-classmate from Yale, George Pillsbury. So as everybody mixed, mingled, and air kissed, I focused on steering the POTUS, as gracefully as possible, over to that all-important guest book. Gently touching the president’s elbow, I pointed to the guest book—and the president, intuitive about social niceties, leaned over and wrote something kind on the page, signing it with a flourish.
It was a wonderful event: The president was gracious in his remarks, and I was allowed to say a few words myself. My entire family joined me—Marcus, the five kids, my mother, and in-laws all rumbling onto the property in our ancient Ford high-top van, the one with a cracked headlight and a bobblehead hula girl sitting atop the dashboard. Poor Marcus. As the helpful husband in a thrifty middle-class family, raising twenty-eight kids over the years, he had grown used to arriving at fund-raisers in a comparative jalopy. He would joke to the parking valets, with a twinkle in his eye, that his other car was in the shop. For her part, my mother took one look at me and frowned when she saw that my gloves were missing. I said preemptively, “Mom, I’ll explain later.”
Yet another big thing also happened that night: Our two youngest children, Caroline and Sophia, had their youthful lives changed. Marcus, always thinking ahead, had said to them a few days earlier, “Let’s make this event your chance to improve your social skills and your confidence.” That’s the way Marcus thinks; this fund-raiser with the president was one of the biggest events of our political career together—he was certainly appreciative of that—but at the same time, he was also thinking of the children. So he gently instructed the two shy g
irls, then twelve and fourteen, that their mission for the evening was to go up to everyone at the dinner and introduce themselves. Nobody would bite them, he promised. He even role-played the exercise with them. Caroline and Sophia were both a bit daunted at the prospect, but when they arrived at the former Pillsbury home, they went for it; sticking close together, they primly and properly extended their greeting to all the folks. The girls knew, of course, that Marcus was hovering nearby, ready to help in case of a faux pas emergency. And so their debut in big-time political fund-raising was a success; they had no trouble working the room. That’s the way childhood ought to be: parents guiding the development of their kids, seizing every opportunity to help them grow in confidence and ability.
Meanwhile, during my 2006 campaign, other Republicans luminaries helped out as well. Vice President Dick Cheney spoke at a similar event. The vice president, of course, is no backslapper. And while he understood at the time that politics was part of the job, he knew that his main mission during those perilous years was safeguarding America. As it happened, the day he appeared with me in Minnesota was also the day the New York Times broke a story detailing classified American intelligence secrets. And the vice president was more than a little angry about that story. I’ll always remember the scene: the vice president, with a beautiful lake in the background, a hot and intense sun in his face, speaking forcefully as he delivered an impassioned impromptu address, outlining the dangers that America was confronting every day from terrorism—and emphasizing that the Times’s revelations had made the danger even greater. The vice president wasn’t there to win a warm-and-fuzzy contest, but he won my respect that day for his defense of American security, his intellect, and serious demeanor. As my daughter Sophia said to me later, “I would want him as my uncle.”
Core of Conviction : My Story (9781101563571) Page 17