Core of Conviction : My Story (9781101563571) (14 page)

Marcus had a good job, but with seven of us, money was always tight. And I will admit, my natural frugality—handed down to me from thrifty ancestors and reinforced by lean years while I was growing up—came into play. I knew all that I had done to make ends meet, to stretch dimes into dollars, and I knew all that Marcus had done as well. And we wanted to share those values with our kids. I was very tight at the grocery store, buying generics, skimping on meat, and making nearly all of our menus from scratch. For instance, we bought dehydrated milk powder at the store, then added water at home. The kids
hated
it, so Marcus and I finally gave in. But to this day, we are always on the lookout for discount coupons from any source; even on the campaign trail, Marcus picks through newspaper inserts looking for bargains. Most of my clothes, even today, are from consignment stores. As for our children, we wanted them to be good shoppers, and we also wanted them to think in terms of paying cash, not using a line of credit.

Lucas likes to tell the story of the time we went to the Goodwill store to buy him a pair of winter boots. Usually, Goodwill is a great place for bargains—but not on that day, or at least not for boots. I took one look at the price tag and said, “This is just too overpriced!” Okay, maybe I said it a little too loudly. Okay, maybe I said it loudly enough so that everybody else in the store heard me. My apologies to the other shoppers, who might not have needed to hear my audible price-point analysis, but I am glad that Lucas remembers. “Come on, kids,” I said, “Goodwill is too expensive for Mom!” The kids said, “Wow.” Listen to your mother—always good advice!

In Minneapolis, there was a great store called Discount 70. The rule is, everything is 70 percent off. And that's a good start. But on the day after Christmas, all Christmas items are 90 percent off. Now
that's
more like it! So every December 26, we would trek over to Discount 70 and load up on gifts for the year ahead, plus Christmas cards, plus wrapping paper, plus everything else we needed. It was always a great teachable shopping moment for the kids.

And I probably shouldn't tell this story, but one time Marcus saw that a car dealer was offering roast beef sandwiches to visitors coming into the showroom. Not just hot dogs, but real roast beef. So Marcus went in, kicked a few tires, and ate a few sandwiches. Anything to stretch the paycheck!

Those were fun years. Lucas, who became a teenager in the nineties, probably has the quickest wit of anyone in the family, as well as the best vocabulary. He attended both Bethel University in St. Paul and the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis; he is now a medical doctor.

Harrison, five years younger than his brother and thus closer in age to the three girls, proved to be a wonderful big brother. A jock himself, he would always encourage his sisters to be athletic. In the manner of his father, Harrison has always been a social animal; he made a lot of friends in high school and made even more at Wheaton College in Illinois. Since graduating, he has nearly completed his master's in teaching and worked for two years as a special education teacher for SomaliAmerican and Ethiopian refugee kids in St. Paul.

Elisa, the oldest of the girls, took enormous responsibility in raising her little sisters—and in helping all of us. She packed the knapsacks for the littler ones on their way to school, scheduled their dentist appointments, and made sure their permission slips were always ready. As the middle child, she has been the hub of the family—the go-to girl for all her siblings. She got the job done for us at home and then later went off to a Christian college in Florida.

Caroline is the most bubbly, the most animated, the most athletic—and the tallest of the girls. She makes friends easily; in high school she always took part in sports and ran cross-country. She was, and is, an avid reader and also takes a diligent approach to shopping; she and her little sister know their way around all the bargain outlets in the area—although, primarily, they are “Maxxinistas.” As in T.J.Maxx. Caroline is now in college.

Sophia is the youngest—and let's talk about her name; she is perhaps the child that Marcus and I had the most trouble naming. Come to think of it, we have always had trouble naming our kids. Lucas went unnamed for six weeks, because as nervous first-time parents, we wanted to get his name right. Our first choice was Christian David, and of course our parents and friends all weighed in with comments and criticisms. Ultimately, it was embarrassing to have an unnamed baby, so we made a decision, Lucas Barrett Paul, and told our family and friends that they would have to live with it. After that, we wised up and resolved that future baby names would be
our
decision, not a family group project! Still, sometimes we were grateful for help. Harrison's middle name, Sterling, came from the nurse at the hospital, who was just trying to nudge us to get something down on paper, in order to complete his birth certificate. But as soon as she said it, we loved it.

And of course, all the kids have nicknames. Lucas has been called “Deedee” since Elisa was little. She couldn't pronounce “Lucas,” and so she called him “Deedee,” and the name stuck. So now, at home, he is known as “Doctor Deedee.” And at one time—I can't remember why—Caroline assigned her siblings nicknames based on breakfast foods. So for years, the kids called us and each other names such as “Sausage,” for Marcus, or “Orange Juice” for Lucas, or “Honeypie” for Harrison. In that same fun spirit, Elisa became “Eggs,” Caroline was “Pancake,” and Sophia was “Waffle.” The nicknames have all evolved now, but we still have them. I am the main user of nicknames, and Marcus relies on me to decode who is who. He only knows them by their given names. “Is Sophia now ‘Toffee'?” he'll ask.

Indeed, food seems to be a major theme around the Bachmann household. We play “turkey bingo” after Thanksgiving dinner is complete, keeping all the usual rules of bingo, except that instead of the winner saying, “Bingo!” he or she yells, “Gobble gobble!” And the winning prize includes treats Marcus knows each child wants, including beef jerky or Swiss chocolate. Depending on who wins the other's prize, the loser might say, “Hey, that's my prize—not fair!” Then there'll be some chasing around the house, the losers chasing after the winner. Now we all know what will happen and the kids figure out who will chase whom around the dining-room table. Perhaps you had to be there, but for us it is hilarious and highly anticipated. And Boomer the beagle, whom we rescued from the pound, seems to love turkey bingo too. No wonder he's gotten a bit hefty. Marcus makes sure that his treats are the rule, not the exception. Note to self: Boomer needs to be in the garage when too much food is being passed around.

Marcus always joked, “Life is short. Eat dessert first!” Of course, whenever I ate dessert, I thought of those two great Minnesota girls, Mary Richards and Rhoda Morgenstern, as Rhoda confronted weight issues on the great
Mary Tyler Moore
Show
. Once, as Rhoda held a piece of candy in her hand, she said, “I don't know why I'm putting this in my mouth. I should just apply it directly to my hips.” Rhoda's predicament rings true to women everywhere. My own food weakness runs more toward cookies, and so I have to count every calorie—even if I sometimes count them retroactively!

Regarding Sophia and her name. I had always liked the name Sylvia or Solveig. And then Sigrid, which seemed like a nice way to remember my Norwegian ancestors. But Marcus pointed out that she'd inevitably be known as Siggy. But who knows, maybe Sophia could have handled that name with aplomb, as she has always been the most theatrical of our kids. Yet I might note that her career on the boards had its moments. One day, when she was onstage at a school play, she fainted. She was at the Christian school—it was a Bible play, and she was an Old Testament prophet—and then she swooned, right in front of the audience of mostly parents. I was in the front row, about twelve feet away from her, and jumped so fast that I caught her before she hit the floor. Marcus was there, too; he and I got her to the hospital. She fainted a second time at school; I was then serving in the Minnesota state senate, and I came running back from work. As a result, I missed a vote—which made the newspapers. This year, Sophia is off to college. Although technically a high school senior, she will do college work this year. She has always been unusually mature; the kids call her a forty-five-year-old woman.

Meanwhile, because there are so many of us in the family, and because we are always trying to save money, we celebrate birthdays on the cheap. Yet for holidays such as Easter, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and Christmas, we never scrimp or hold back. At Christmas we have a gigantic tree in the living room—a live tree, crowned by an angel. Christmas is a special family time, of course, and yet I missed it once, with great reluctance. That was Christmas 2007, when I went to visit the troops in Iraq. Family means everything to me, and yet that Christmas with the troops seemed even more important. On the flight back, our military transport plane stopped for an extra-long layover in Ireland, and I went out and bought sweaters for the kids as presents.

We got through those years with the help of a mortgage, but we incurred no other debt. Except for that home loan, Marcus and I have never been in debt. We always knew that fat years could turn into lean years, and we always wanted to be ready.

How did we do it? Well, I think there are some lessons here, especially for the greatest debtor of all, our own Uncle Sam. In the seventies, we often heard a slogan: “The personal is political.” That meant that everything one did in one's personal life needed to be judged according to left-leaning politically correct standards. I disagree vehemently: I am against all attempts to pressure people into meeting arbitrary political standards. Here in America, we should be free to live our lives—bounded, of course, by basic ethics and by the law—without being hectored by a nanny state or even the nanny media.

But I will give liberals credit for this much: Sometimes the personal is indeed political. If the American people, in their personal lives, need to be thrifty and prudent or else risk bankruptcy and ruin, Uncle Sam too should be thrifty and prudent. If people shop at garage sales and secondhand stores, if they go online to eBay and other bargain-hunting sites, if they wait till the day after Christmas to buy presents—then surely the federal government too should pick up some pointers on how to lower its spending. The basic rules of common sense apply equally in Washington, D.C., and in Stillwater. The difference, unfortunately, is that the people in Washington don't seem to think these rules apply to them. And as long as the American people let Washington get away with such arrogant thinking—taxing, borrowing, money printing, avoiding the tough choices that the rest of us constantly have to make—then, of course, Washington will never stop its profligacy.

During the nineties, whenever I had a free moment, I could be found reading everything from political philosophy to
Investor's Business Daily
. At the same time, I would listen to the music of Bach—and I should note that I was a fan even before I met Mr. Bachmann! I enjoy Bach and Handel because I find it soothing to think that mortal men could compose such immortal melodies. And the rest of us, too, can enjoy this music across the centuries.

So there I was, sitting in the backyard and studying current events, feeling increasing concern—and growing stronger in my determination to do something positive. In particular, I followed the news about Bill Clinton's presidency with greater and greater alarm. And not just the scandals and the impeachment trial but also the even more ominous news about an evil new figure on the world stage, Osama bin Laden. In 1998, when I heard about Al Qaeda's terrorist attacks on two U.S. embassies in East Africa, I remember thinking,
This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

And during that same decade, the nineties, I realized once again that the government was often hurting us, not helping us. The politicians and the bureaucrats in both St. Paul and Washington were using our tax money to make our problems worse. I asked myself:
What is wrong with this picture? What terrible things are they doing with our taxes?
Marcus and I had homeschooled our kids for many years, then sent them to Christian schools, and yet we kept hearing from other parents that some public schools were not only inflicting harmful values on kids but also watering down the curricula. And so I became an education activist, fighting against the government-imposed Profile of Learning, an effort that took me to that fateful Republican district convention in Mahtomedi on April 1, 2000.

As I grew busier, the child-rearing responsibilities were increasingly shared with Marcus. We have always been a good team, as husband/wife and parents. Marcus and I each did what had to be done, so each carried out nontraditional roles. Our focus was taking care of the kids and getting the job done, not on who should own each task. Back during our wedding sermon, we had been told that it is often said that in marriages, it should be 50–50. But that was wrong, our pastor said. We need to each be prepared to give everything. We took that to heart, and each of us has striven to give 100 percent to the family. I think that's the key to why our family works, because we each do whatever is needed to get the job done. If I was in St. Paul or later in Washington, D.C., or out on the campaign trail, Marcus took care of the kids and our business. He always did everything he could—but now he did even more. And with his own brand of enthusiasm.

It was Marcus, a real steady-eddie, who held the fort. Every night, no matter where I was, he would have dinner ready at home. On school nights, our kids were not allowed to watch TV, although we made an exception for
American Idol
. He kept the TV and the computer in the family room, next to the kitchen, making a point of always being nearby to keep an eye on things. If any of the young adults wanted to talk, he would be there for them. He knew that sometimes they wanted to chitchat, just to get out of going to bed, but that was a fair trade. Marcus knew that if a teenager started talking, he or she would eventually open up, and an observant parent would quickly figure out if anything was wrong. As they say, quality time occurs within quantity time. And Marcus spent quantity time with our kids when I had to be in Washington. We also observed that as much as our children needed us when they were little, it seemed that they needed us more as they neared adulthood, because they needed our minds and attention. They needed to know we were dialed in to them, paying close watch, providing guardrails for their decisions. We were blessed. They were raised with restrictions, yet they became very happy, confident, young adults.