In Campaign Events, Bachmann Controls Image

By TRIP GABRIEL
NYT

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — As Representative Michele Bachmann’s blue bus pulled up to a recent rally here, a campaign aide shooed a reporter poised to ask a question from the spot where she would step down. “Our arrivals are closed,” he said.

After her speech under a scorching sun, Mrs. Bachmann popped back into the bus to freshen up before meeting reporters and their high-definition cameras, looking as pulled-together as if she had visited a day spa.

All presidential candidates try to control their image. But the campaign of Mrs. Bachmann, the winner of the Iowa straw poll this month who is now battling to be seen as a national front-runner, is more controlling than most, carefully stage-managing her contacts with the news media and the public.

That control is partly about her appearance, a far more complicated issue for a female candidate because there is no voter consensus on what looking “presidential” means for a woman. Viewers of a televised debate this month with seven male candidates scratched their heads when Mrs. Bachmann disappeared offstage during commercials, before learning she was touching up her makeup.

(More here.)