A new attack is being aimed at a congresswoman from Minnesota, Michele Bachmann, at just about the same time as a new poll that named her as the leading presidential candidate among Iowa Republicans.

As a National Journal article put it: “You’ll never guess what Michele Bachmann, the rabble-rousing, tax-reviling, government-bashing idol of America’s tea party movement, used to do for a living. Sue tax scofflaws for the Internal Revenue Service.”

The Wall Street Journal followed with its own take, under the headline, “Bachmann’s Tax Attorney Job Was Collector for the IRS.”

The rest of the press duly piled on. “Bachmann’s IRS past under scrutiny,” was the title of a Huffington Post video. “Michele Bachmann under fire for…IRS Work,” was aheadline in the Los Angeles Times.

Before disqualifying Ms. Bachmann on this count, though, some historical perspective is in order. Tea Party activists might recall Samuel Adams, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who gave the order to begin the original Boston Tea Party. Before serving as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and a member of the Continental Congress, Adams for years worked as a tax collector of the town of Boston.

Then there is Thomas Paine, who wrote the influential “Common Sense” pamphlet in 1776 arguing for American Independence, and also the classic 1776 essay “The American Crisis”: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” Paine, too, had worked as a tax collector — in his case, in England — before joining the American revolutionary cause.

So if, as Ms. Bachmann claims, her experience as a tax collector got her to thinking about the need for reform, and even raised in her a certain consciousness about what it means for the government to extract by force property that belongs to the citizens in order to fund the government’s operations — well, she certainly wouldn’t be the first. In fact she’d be following in a long and distinguished line of American patriots.

One doesn’t even have to reach all the way back to revolutionary times to find a similar example. It was Ronald Reagan, a former president of the Screen Actors Guild, who helped redefine American labor relations by firing the members of the federal air traffic controllers union. If Republican primary voters in 1980 had rejected the Gipper because of his labor-leader past, it would have been foolish of them.

I’m not saying Ms. Bachmann is a modern-day Samuel Adams or Thomas Paine or Ronald Reagan. I’m not even saying that the Republicans should nominate her. It’s still early in the campaign. But they should keep open minds. The idea that experience as a tax collector is or ought to be somehow disqualifying in a pro-liberty politician is just historically ignorant.

When it comes to Ms. Bachmann, the issue isn’t that she worked for the Internal Revenue Service, but what she learned from the experience. If she displays even a fraction of Samuel Adams’ rhetorical or organizational skill, or of Thomas Paine’s, in articulating the need for tax simplification and advancing that cause — well, the country sure could use it.

Mr. Stoll is editor of FutureOfCapitalism.com and author of Samuel Adams: A Life.