Core of Conviction by Michele Bachman

I ran across this one a little late, from the perspective of the election cycle, as Mrs. Bachman had already dropped out of the primaries. However, just to satisfy my curiosity and find out what she had to say...

She and I are very nearly the same age, so many of the things she describes experiencing as a child and young lady seem very familiar to me - growing up in small town Idaho and Iowa are not all that different. I'd say that her early life was quite idyllic, were it not for the fact that her father abandoned the family and divorced her mother while Michele was about fourteen. For some time, she had the experience of being part of a family struggling to make ends meet, which should resonate well with most Americans.

Though her mother thought she should just take a secretarial job after graduating from high school, Bachman pursued her dream to go on to college, where she met her future husband, Marcus. Eventually, she would get her degree, then finish law school. She took a job as a federal tax attorney, working for the IRS, which gives her an interesting perspective on our tax code. Her husband became a christian counselor, and they ran a successful counseling business together, while raising five children together.

I think one of the most impressive things that they did during this time period was also to provide homes for twenty-three foster children, while raising their own. They both definitely have a heart for others in need, and it really takes a special kind of person to invest in the lives of at-risk teens over a significant portion of their lives. No matter your opinion about her other political stances, you have to admire that in Mrs. Bachman.

Eventually, she was drawn into politics on a local level at first due to her concerns about the decline of education in Minnesota and around the nation. She became active on the grass roots level in a campaign to demand more local accountability and less federal government interference. When an incumbent state senator refused to listen to her concerns and those of others like her, she pretty much accidentally ended up running against him herself in the republican primary, and won.

Mrs. Bachman makes a very clear and unabashed case for her own core Christian and Conservative principles, upon which she bases her political and personal decisions. She seemed to have problems expressing those as effectively on a national stage, under the spotlights, but that's politics.