The One That Got Away

Shown are President Bobby Jindal and his lovely wife entering the White House for his inaugural ball in 2013. I can fantasize, can't I? Louisiana Governor Jindal has made it clear that he has no intention of running for the office during this election cycle, and I'm more than a little disappointed. We don't do endorsements in primary elections, but I can still extol his virtues for future reference since he simply isn't going to run this time.

Jindal's stunning reelection victory this past weekend in Louisiana created a lot of buzz in the blogosphere, including but not limited to The American Spectator and National Review. He won with a two-thirds vote in an all-party election in which he faced nine opponents. In other words, he got twice as many votes as all his opponents combined. He also won in a state which was previously heavily Democratic, and which he has helped to convert to a substantially Republican state.

So I'm going to play a little fantasy politics and tell you why I thought Jindal was the ideal candidate to beat Obama. Simply put, he steals all of those things that got Obama elected, but with the addition of real accomplishment and a genuinely conservative political point of view. The superfluous things that worked for Obama work for Jindal. He is young. He is dynamic. He's a riveting public speaker (forget that terrible response to the State of the Union address he gave two years ago). He obviously appeals to a broad spectrum of voters, including both wealthy and poor whites. Louisiana is not a microcosm of America, but the recent election certainly indicated he is a candidate who can appeal to a growingly multi-ethnic America in states that not long ago still had Jim Crow laws.

Obama would not be able to use his semi-subtle racism against Jindal, because Jindal "doesn't look like other Presidents" either. At the same time, Jindal has never used race or ethnicity to advance his cause. He truly would be a post-racial President. Older voters like myself can simply like him for all the things he is and has done, but younger voters are much more in tune with multiculturalism. Obama says "celebrate diversity." Jindal says "respect diversity, support unity." Jindal is as American as apple pie curry.

Obama constantly spoke about his education. Jindal rarely does. But the leftist intellectual elite constantly brought the subject up in the Obama/McCain election. That wouldn't happen in a Jindal/Obama matchup. Let's take a quick look. Obama attended Occidental College (definitely), Columbia University (allegedly), and moved on to become the editor of the Harvard Law Review without ever having written a single scholarly article for the Review himself. His records are sealed, and nobody seems to remember him at either Columbia or Harvard Law.

Jindal, the son of Indian immigrants, was born Piyush Jindal in Baton Rouge, but chose to be called "Bobby" from an early age. His brilliance showed early. He graduated from Baton Rouge Magnet School (for really smart kids). But he wasn't all brains. He was an accomplished tennis player. In his "spare time" he started a computer newsletter, a retail candy business, and a mail order software business. He never had a job as a community organizer. He was too busy gaining both real life experience, an understanding of business, and a remarkable education which is all public record. No sealed academic records here.

Jindal was one of fifty high school students nationally to be chosen for a special pre-medical honors program at elite Ivy League Brown University. He graduated, with honors, in two majors--public policy and biology. As a standout scholar, he was recruited by both Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School, with full scholarships to both. Instead, he chose to attend Oxford University, where he received a master's degree in political science with an emphasis in health policy. He received an award at Oxford for a thesis on "needs-based health care." He turned down a PhD scholarship program at Oxford, deciding it was time to return to the United States and get a job as a political and public health consultant with the firm of McKinsey and Company.

I think we know who would end up with the mucky end of the stick in an "I'm smarter than you" contest with the pseudo-intellectual and questionably-credentialed Obama. But early on, Jindal realized that the academic credentials were all well and good, but if he didn't want to be a college professor, it was time to get out into the real world. At age 25, Jindal was tapped by Louisiana Governor Mike Foster to be the head of Louisiana's Department of Health and Hospitals. Combining his academic credentials with a practical sense of how public money ought to be spent, Jindal spent three years at the job. When he came into the job, Louisiana DHH was experiencing a $400 million dollar deficit with Medicaid and bankruptcy. At the end of his watch, that same department had a $220 million dollar surplus.

Jindal went on to many more achievements, using government to promote and bolster private investment and innovation before being elected America's first Indian-American governor. In the deep South, no less. As a Congressman, he had earned rave reviews, even from Democrats, for his involvement in private enterprise solutions to the Katrina disaster. He rolled up his sleeves as governor, and personally oversaw the relief efforts after hurricane Gustav, and took on Obama for the President's failure to do anything more than talk about the BP oil spill. He had proposed works projects which may have prevented much of the spill from arriving on Louisiana shores, but got zero cooperation from the federal government.

Compare Jindal's Louisiana to Obama's DC. Lately, it seems like a scandal erupts two or three times a week on Obama's watch. He uses back door politics and Chicago-style thuggery to get his way. His Justice Department is a politicized, racialized mess, and his Attorney General is apparently complicit in the sneaky Fast and Furious operation which turned deadly. Louisiana, on the other hand, had been one of the crookedest states in the union, with its most famous demagogue Huey P. Long planning to run for President. Jindal himself has never been touched by personal or political scandal, and his administration cleaned up the state house and the legislature with new and seriously-enforced ethics rules.

Jindal has a fine way of being very conservative, but without appearing to be overly-partisan. He seems to be able to whip Democrats into line without making grandstand headlines about how he conquered the "enemy." He defeats recalcitrant legislators by persuasion and savvy political maneuvering. He appears boyish while possessing the political acumen of a very experienced old pol.

On top of it all, Jindal can deride Obamacare from both the intellectual and practical high ground. His experience with Louisiana's DHH and his position as Bill Clinton's Medicare commission chairman give him bipartisan credentials as the man who could come up with a genuine solution for the medically uninsured without the dangerous economic consequences of Obamacare. He favors interstate contracts and portable insurance from state to state while opening the market to private insurers across state lines. As Quinn Hillyer said in his American Spectator article, "he can explain 'premium support' and market solutions better than anyone in the business, especially in a debate, where--unlike a formal speech setting (remember the State of the Union response)--Jindal absolutely sparkles." Jindal is a true policy wonk without sounding the least bit wonkish.

Jindal has proven himself to be an economic conservative cost-cutter and efficiency-increaser. He also has solid social conservative views, but doesn't spend valuable time beating opponents over the head with the Bible. Again, he persuades and maneuvers rather than making a donnybrook out of the issues. But he knows that the economy will be the true issue for his state and the national government at election time. The libertarian/conservative CATO Institute gave Jindal an "A" on fiscal policy, citing the increase in efficient Louisiana public services while cutting state spending by 26%. He has bent on a few interim special taxes in order to bring legislators into his fold, but his basic philosophy is to reduce taxes, increase efficiency, cut spending. He has succeeded at all three.

Before the current candidates announced their intentions to run, I had visions of Jindal wiping the floor with Obama in debates on the economy, statism, and rabid egalitarianism. I won't get that chance now. Jindal has declared in no uncertain terms that he will not seek the presidency in 2012. To prove his steadfastness in avoiding the nomination, he has endorsed fellow Governor Rick Perry. I'll keep my own counsel on that choice, but I would rather have seen Jindal do it for himself and all of us. Maybe next time.