Understatement of the Week: Ed Rollins

Misstatements on the campaign trail come with the territory. Every politician at some time wishes people would pay a little less attention to what they say.

Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., is running such a campaign, as she seeks the Republican nomination to challenge President Barack Obama for the highest office in the land next year.

But some would say she is as famous for her gaffs as she is for anything else. She recently linked a vaccine for a sexually transmitted disease to mental retardation, a rogue concept from a scientific point of view, and once wished Elvis Presley a happy birthday on the anniversary of his death.

Bachmann once said, "I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another ... Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence," a statement that might be odd enough on its face, but turns out is also incorrect, as the 1976 swine flu outbreak occurred when Gerald Ford, a Republican, was in the White House.

She did a bit of name-dropping at one campaign stop, telling a crowd "John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That's the spirit that I have, too." Only Hollywood's Duke was born in Winterset, Iowa, and the man from Waterloo was John Wayne Gracy, a serial killer.

Those misstatements and other conflicts on the campaign trail led Bachmann's campaign manager, Ed Rollins, to reassess his options and look for another job.

Rollins backstage has a more subtle approach than his former boss does in front of a microphone.

"When you raise small-donor money, you go on Fox and say something more or less outrageous and that's what people contribute to," The New York Times reported Rollins said.

Understatement No. 1: "You throw a hand grenade, and people respond," he said.

He topped that off with Understatement No. 2, saying that to attract serious campaign contributions, "You've got to be a serious candidate with serious solutions."

Then he added Understatement No. 3: "That's a challenge," he said.