Michele Bachmann on Her Numerous Falsehoods: "I Haven't Misled People at All"

Michele Bachmann seems to be the antithesis of the George Washington myth. The Congresswoman from Minnesota who recently declared she was entering the race for the 2012 GOP nomination to run against President Barack Obama went on CBS' "Face The Nation" and blatantly told at least two lies during a conversation on her record of falsehoods recently revealed by Politifact, the St. Petersburg Times Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checkers. Truth be told, it does not appear that the Tea Party leader can discern truth from falsehood.

After completely ducking and dodging Bob Schieffer's questions on same-sex marriage and whether or not she would appoint someone to a judgeship that advocated same-sex marriage, he asked her to explain how so many of her statements turned out to be falsehoods or partially untrue (only one of the 23 statements Politifact checked was found to be completely true).

Totally ignoring the larger question of how she could explain all those falsehoods, she decided to try to explain the example he chose, which was her statement that the Obama administration had only issue one drilling permit, when the administration had, at the time of the factcheck, issued 270.

"Well, you know," she said, "I think that what is clear more than anything is the fact that President Obama does-- has not been issuing the permits, that he should have been issuing on offshore drilling that's--"

Schieffer told her that the administration had, and now that number was up to over 300 permits. So she attempted another tack, bringing up the release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. She said that the President had made the country more vulnerable.

She said, "... it's ironic and sad that the President released all of the oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve because the President doesn't have an energy policy."

Of course, Bob Schieffer at the time may have not known it, but he had just witnessed Bachmann squirming out of explaining a slew of lies by trying to deflect, then positing another falsehood -- Lie No. 24 (?). President Obama did not release "all" of the Strategic Oil Reserve, just a portion of it -- a very small portion of it. He released 30 million barrels. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve contains 726.6 million barrels, is the world's largest, and is designed to last the country for a month during an emergency.

After letting Bachmann ramble a bit, Schieffer, knowing his interview time was running short, redirected Bachmann back to the original question. He asked, "Do you feel you have misled people?"

Bachmann was quick to answer with Lie No. 25 (?), "No, I haven't misled people at all." She then went on to talk about how the President had misled the American people.

She hasn't misled people at all, she says. When there is a misrepresentation of the truth, even if the tranmitter of said falsehood is unknowing of its false nature, then the recipient has been misled. But Michele Bachmann tells falsehoods as a matter of course, so it is difficult to believe that she could be so willfully blind to her own false comments, especially when the erroneous or false facets of her comments are constantly being brought to her attention by the media. Could it truly be that she does not know or understand that she is lying or spreading false information? Given her education and training in legal matters (she has a doctorate in Tax Law), although plausible, being oblivious or unknowing is incredibly difficult to believe.

It is more likely that Bachmann's ideology trumps her moral values, that promoting her evangelical right-wing political agenda supercedes everything else -- and that would include honesty.