Who is Christine O’Donnell? (Hint: She’s Not You)

With the midterm elections less than a week away, political news has been focused on a few key races. In one of these races, Tea Party darling Christine O’Donnell is the Republican candidate for Vice President Biden’s old senate seat. Despite trailing her opponent in the polls by double digits, O’Donnell has earned national attention for a series of odd quotes and revelations. The thing about O’Donnell, though, is that the deeper you dig the less you seem to find.

It’s hard to say what O’Donnell is best known for. Is it her ad that opens with her looking earnestly into the camera and saying “I’m not a witch … I’m You”? Or is it the TV appearance in which she describes “dabbling” in witchcraft and having a picnic lunch on a satanic alter? Perhaps last week’s debate, when she asked her opponent where separation of church and state could be found in the first amendment? Or the time she claimed scientists were cross-breeding humans to come up with “mice with fully functioning human brains”? O’Donnell has also been accused of lying about her academic background and using campaign contributions to pay her rent (which is illegal).

I went to O’Donnell’s website hoping to gain a better understanding of her, or at least a better understanding of who she wants me to think she is. I was left with more questions than answers. Her biography states that she attended Fairleigh Dickinson University, but does not say when she graduated. As it turns out, though she completed coursework years ago, unpaid tuition prevented her from collecting her diploma until this summer. There are several videos on O’Donnell’s website, most of which feature montages of campaign events set to inspiring music. In the videos, O’Donnell does almost no talking and absolutely no talking about issues of any kind. The issues section of her website is not so much a section as it is a chart, listing Chris Coons’ voting record opposite her campaign promises. There aren’t even full sentences. Then there is what I have been able to glean about O’Donnell from other sources: She is Catholic. She hates taxes. She either doesn’t know what is in the first amendment or doesn’t care. She says she is me.

She doesn’t say she is like me, or that she is someone I would like to have a beer with. She says she is me. But wait! I pay my tuition, I pay my rent, I know what the first amendment says, and I don’t think there are mice with human brains roaming around! She can’t be me. Who is she? She’s a charismatic woman with fifteen minutes of fame. Unless she pulls off a miracle next Tuesday, we won’t be hearing much from Christine O’Donnell in the future. So let’s enjoy it while we can; pretty soon Congress will be back in session and we’ll have to talk about real issues again.