Bachmann: Campaign was ‘one series of humiliations after another’

Michele Bachmann is no longer a candidate for president. And she sounds a bit relieved to be done with the national campaign.

“I thought you would be interested in knowing that running for president of the United States is really one series of humiliations after another,” she told conservative activists at the annual CPAC gathering here.

But it was an educational experience, she joked, and shared some of the lessons that she learned while campaigning in the early primary states and navigating the national media gauntlet.

“First of all, I learned where John Wayne was born. That’s very important,” she said. (During the campaign in Iowa, she mistakenly said she was in Wayne’s birthplace, when it was actually that of serial killer John Wayne Gacy.)

“And then second, I learned the day that Elvis Presley was born. These are vital issues to our republic!” she continued, referring to a mix-up of the King of Rock and Roll’s birth date and death date.

“And third, I learned never forget the three things that you learned!” she concluded, poking fun at another former candidate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Bachmann dropped out of the race for the GOP presidential nomination after a disappointing showing in Iowa. She has since announced she will be again running for her Minnesota congressional seat.

But picking up where she left off in her campaign, she castigated President Obama’s foreign policy, something polls show is actually among his strongest assets in the 2012 race.

The death of Osama bin Laden, among other things, were only “tactical successes,” which “don’t begin to compare with the mess that [he] has made of the Middle East and the strategic foreign policy blunders he’s committed.”