Bachmann's migraines are a phony issue
Editor's note: Andrew Levy holds the Cooper Chair in English at Butler University. He is the author of "A Brain Wider Than the Sky: A Migraine Diary" (Simon and Schuster, 2009).
(CNN) -- First of all: Michele Bachmann will not be getting my vote for president.
But that is a political decision, not a medical one. Reading media reports that she suffers from a severe migraine condition, I feel for her.
As one of over 30 million Americans who gets migraines regularly, I suspect I'm not alone in feeling empathy here. Bachmann has the same problem, politically speaking, that millions of other "migraineurs" experience with their co-workers, bosses, and friends. If you've never had a migraine, you tend to assume that the blinding headaches and neurological disruptions mean that the migraineur is either very brave, or very fragile.
The truth is neither of these.
As the story of Bachmann's migraines unfolds, it is easy to see, through the prism of our politics, how migraine is viewed: It is almost like a scandal.
Her opponents search for veiled ways to score political points: Tim Pawlenty reminds an audience in Iowa that "All of the candidates ... are going to have to demonstrate they can do all of the job, all of the time" -- as if he never sleeps.
Political consultants like Karl Rove urge her to "get her doctors out there quickly" and beat the news cycle. Her brother reassures reporters that "she is not intellectually incapacitated." Her campaign releases a letter from the congressional physician downplaying the condition, noting that she knows her "trigger factors" and can "control" her headaches with "as-needed" drugs like sumatriptan, the reliable, prosaic Model T of migraine drugs.
Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_allpolitics/~3/IrnXtELBlH0/index.html