Michele, here’s the bell

Gail Collins

Friday, May 31, 2013 | 2 a.m.

If Michele Bachmann leaves Congress, does that mean the end of the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act? That was pretty much my favorite Michele Bachmann piece of legislation.

“President Bachmann will allow you to buy any light bulb you want,” she had vowed during her campaign for the Republican nomination in 2012. Nobody got into the issue of repressive lighting efficiency standards in quite the same way.

That presidential race was pretty much the peak of Bachmann’s career. Remember her high point, when she swept to victory in the Iowa straw poll? Which was followed by the low point of coming in sixth in the actual Iowa caucuses. And calls for the abolition of future straw polls.

Now it’s all over, apparently. On Wednesday, while touring Russia and unavailable for comment, Bachmann released a video announcing that she would not run for re-election in 2014.

“I will continue to work vehemently and robustly to fight back against what most in the other party want to do, to transform our country into becoming. Which would be a nation that our founders would hardly even recognize today,” Bachmann told the nation. As only she could.

Her announcement had a strange, perky quality that drew instant comparisons to airline safety videos. Although it went on for more than eight minutes, Bachmann was vague about several critical points, such as why she was quitting. She was far more specific about what was not propelling her out. Definitely not the fact that the guy who nearly beat her last time around has announced that he is running again. And totally for sure not reports that the FBI is investigating her campaign finances.

“My future is full, it is limitless, and my passions for America will remain,” she said over cheery background music. She could very easily have been telling us that in case of loss of cabin pressure, we should put on our own oxygen mask before aiding other passengers.

So farewell to Michele Bachmann, a politician who had a great faith in average folks — readily quoting their opinions to the nation as if the information had just emerged from the labs of MIT. A woman at a debate complained that a vaccine against HPV caused mental retardation, and Bachmann instantly announced the news on network TV. Ditto with the inside scoop from a Japanese man who assured her that in his home country, people who criticize the government aren’t allowed to get health care.

In honor of her departure, Michele-watchers around the country rolled out their favorite Bachmann quotes. Mine was her contention that the theory of evolution was disputed by “hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes.”

We might not see her like again. Or, if one shows up, we might decide not to pay attention.

A long-running adieu (she’s not really going away until the end of 2014) to a woman who worships the founding fathers — who, she once informed a Republican crowd, started off the Revolution with a shot “heard round the world” in New Hampshire. Patriots like Washington, Jefferson and Madison, who would never have wanted to live in an America where there were census forms or high-protein cafeteria meals. (“Where in the Constitution does it say the fed. government should regulate potatoes in school lunches?” she Twittered.)

The most interesting question about Bachmann is how she and Sarah Palin came to be the two most high-profile women in the Tea Party. Neither one has ever had a real political organization. Palin didn’t like being governor enough to finish the term. Bachmann has been a terrible legislator. Women in Congress tend to be good at working with others. Bachmann is good at talking on her cellphone during meetings.

They certainly have intense personalities. But you have to wonder if the secret is that, by political standards, they both look extremely hot. And if it’s their appearance that made them such stars, is that for the benefit of the Tea Party men or the Tea Party women? Ronnee Schreiber, a professor at San Diego State University, who studies gender and politics, says the women in the grass-roots Tea Party she’s interviewed kept focusing on how the pair “looked so feminine and dressed so ladylike.”

Whatever Bachmann’s secret, it isn’t really working anymore. Her career jumped the shark when she and a few colleagues demanded that one of Hillary Clinton’s top aides be investigated as a possible Muslim extremist trying to infiltrate the government. The aide, Huma Abedin, is married to former congressman Anthony Weiner, and I think I speak for the entire country when I say the poor woman has enough problems to deal with in the real world.

Meanwhile, the Tea Party caucus Bachmann founded in the House has lost its traction. In the Senate, right-wing newcomers like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have captured the limelight from the congresswoman from Minnesota who once won the Iowa straw poll.

And sponsored the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act. Can’t forget about that.

Gail Collins is a columnist for The New York Times.