I’ll bet you didn’t know that Bobby Jindal is a remarkable, substantive individual with a grand record of accomplishment. That’s probably because you actually watched his response last night and immediately called over your boys Griz and Dot Com to get you dinner and Scary Spice’s phone number. And then you said something hilarious. I know you did.
Michael Gerson pre-wrote a paean to Jindal’s towering presence over the American political landscape, which goes right up there with “Dewey Defeats Truman” and “Detroit Lions: NFL Champions!” as great journalistic errors of all time. Jindal’s speech last night was a grand comedy of errors, from his strange, careful walk out onto the stage to his oddly peppy admission that a black dude gave that speech, to his assault on volcano monitoring to his attempts to use Hurricane Katrina against a black Democrat. It was Bobby’s Big Speech, and the only thing I could see going through his head was how excited he was going to be to go to Olive Garden afterwards.
Gerson bet on it going the other way, and bet hard. Like, there’s no Christmas for baby Gersons this year hard.
Some have compared Jindal to Obama, but the new president has always been more attracted to platitudes than to policy. Rush Limbaugh has anointed Jindal “the next Ronald Reagan.” But Reagan enjoyed painting on a large ideological canvas. In person, Jindal’s manner more closely resembles another recent president: Bill Clinton. Like Clinton (a fellow Rhodes scholar), Jindal has the ability to overwhelm any topic with facts and thoughtful arguments—displaying a mastery of detail that encourages confidence. Both speak of complex policy issues with the world-changing intensity of a late-night dorm room discussion.
Thinking back to the Clinton years, I never once worried that he was going to piss his pants in the middle of a speech. But I was also younger, and less knowledgeable about these things overall.
In recent days, Jindal has displayed another leadership quality: ideological balance. He is highly critical of the economic theory of the stimulus package and turned down $98 million in temporary unemployment assistance to his state—benefits that would have mandated increased business taxes in Louisiana. But unlike some Republican governors who engaged in broad anti-government grandstanding, Jindal accepted transportation funding and other resources from the stimulus—displaying a program-by-program discrimination that will serve him well in public office. Jindal manages to hold to principle while seeing the angles.
Put another and more accurate way, he made the same ideological grandstand as other Republicans, but in a more, shall we say, nuanced (booooo!) manner that allowed him to claim he both opposed the funding and not miss out on the overwhelming benefit of it to the people he governs.
His high-pressure Asian-immigrant background has clearly taught him not to blend in but to stand out. He has tended to join small, beleaguered minorities—such as the College Republicans at Brown University. He converted to a traditionalist Catholicism, in a nation where anti-Catholicism has been called “the last acceptable prejudice.” Jindal, sometimes accused of excessive assimilation, has actually shown a restless, countercultural, intellectual independence.
But this has earned him some unexpected enthusiasm. In Louisiana, Jindal is the darling of evangelical and charismatic churches, where he often tells his conversion story. One Louisiana Republican official has commented, “People think of Bobby Jindal as one of us.” Consider that a moment. In some of the most conservative Protestant communities, in one of the most conservative states in America, Piyush “Bobby” Jindal, a strong Catholic with parents from Punjab, is considered “one of us.”
Besides this blatantly transparent attempt to Mad Lib Barack Obama’s biography in a way that doesn’t seem patently ridiculous (yet fails miserably), the best part is that Gerson is marveling that a Catholic in Louisiana is successful. A Catholic. In Louisiana. Which was founded as a Roman Catholic colony. Which is 30% Catholic. Roman Catholicism being the largest religious denomination in the United States.
When you mix that terrible burden with being a College Republican between 1988 and 1992, I’m surprised Bobby Jindal isn’t a halting, stumbling mess, unable to properly relate to people except through and awkward…oh. I see what I did there.
Jindal was chosen as the Great Brown Hope because he was all the right types of minority - assimilationist immigrant, conservative Catholic, Republican who broke a long line of Democratic governors in a Southern state. But they chose signals, not savvy, which sounds a whole hell of a lot like the thought process behind the pick of Saint Sarah of Wasilla. They made fun of a guy named Barack for calling himself Barry when he was a kid, Jindal chose the name “Bobby” for himself at the age of 4 and hasn’t let go of it since. Obama is the child of an American citizen, Jindal is the child of two immigrants who arrived in the country shortly before his birth. It’s indicative of the Republican bench weakness: they aren’t even picking people who can do actual governing, they’re just picking people who look like Democrats who can do that actual governing. With the ascension of non-white males to the upper echelons of Democratic power, I’m pretty firmly convinced that Republicans will run the dad from That’s So Raven for Obama’s old Senate seat in 2010. Be wary - he’s a charmer.
Picture: NBC page Bobby Jindal with fan.
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Republicans genuinely believe there is no such thing as a woman or minority who is more qualified than any white man. Therefore, if a woman or minority rises to a position of prominence, it only happened because of affirmative action.
That’s why they keep thinking that people who like Barack Obama are going to love Michael Steele and Bobby Jindal: they’re black/brown, too, and they’re Republicans! What’s not to love? Little questions like “competence” or “intelligence” don’t matter, because they’re all unqualified anyway. It’s all PR.
I really hate Republicans sometimes.