Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Pick Jindal

James Joyner:

Bob Novak is reporting that John McCain is planning to announce his vice presidential choice this week, presumably in an attempt to grab the press spotlight back while Barack Obama is being feted overseas. He notes that “Mitt Romney has led the speculation recently.”

Meanwhile, Chris Cillizza says “McCain will huddle with vice presidential aspirant Bobby Jindal during a trip to New Orleans later this week” which suggests that Jindal “is under serious consideration.”

... Romney’s got significant executive experience, is reasonably charismatic, and shores McCain up nicely on the economic front. There is the ever present “Mormon question,” but that’s likely a much lesser problem for the number two spot. The biggest obstacle here is that the two men seem not to like each other very much and there are plenty of sound bytes from their campaign against each other that could be played in the Fall.

Jindal is, as Joseph Lawler puts it, “the Right’s version of Barack Obama: young, a minority, articulate, and appealing. Only, Obama doesn’t have Jindal’s long list of accomplishments.” He helped revamp Medicare as a 24-year-old and turned around Louisiana’s university system before he turned 30. On the other hand, his belief in things like exorcism might not play so well outside that state. Morever, as I’ve argued previously and Cillizza reiterates, Jindal’s “foreign policy resume is at least as thin as Obama’s,” undercutting McCain’s chief argument.

Romney would be the much more conventional choice while Jindal would be more exciting.

I have been following Jindal’s career with interest for some time. He’s a very smart, honest, forward thinking guy with a few quirks. He’s also a proven politico who would add some much needed diversity to the GOP ticket:

On October 20, 2007, Jindal was elected governor of Louisiana, winning a four-way race with 54% of the vote. At age 36, Jindal became the youngest current governor in the United States. He also became the first non-white to serve as governor of Louisiana since Reconstruction, the first elected Indian American governor in U.S. history, as well as the second Asian American governor to serve in the continental United States after Gary Locke of Washington. (Wikipedia)

From US News’ 10 things you didn;t know about Bobby Jindal:

1. The son of immigrants from India’s Punjab state, Jindal made history when he became the first U.S. governor with roots in India.

2. Born Piyush Jindal in Baton Rouge in 1971, he gave himself the nickname Bobby—after the youngest son on The Brady Bunch—when he was 4.

3. Raised a Hindu, Jindal converted to Catholicism as a teenager. As a young convert, he wrote of the emotional and intellectual struggles of his spiritual journey in several articles that were published in the New Oxford Review, a Catholic magazine.

4. Jindal graduated from Baton Rouge High School in 1987. He attended Brown University, graduating with honors in biology and public policy. He turned down admissions to medical and law schools at Harvard and Yale to attend Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar.

5. While attending Oxford, Jindal contemplated joining the priesthood. He ultimately decided that it was not for him.

6. In 2006, Jindal and his wife, Supriya, delivered their third child at home. Barely able to call 911 before the delivery, Jindal received a nurse’s coaching by phone. Just as he was completing the umbilical cord procedure with a shoestring, paramedics arrived. The Jindals have a daughter and two sons.

7. Before he turned 30, Jindal headed Louisiana’s Department of Health and Hospitals and became president of the University of Louisiana System. He served in the Department of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush and was executive director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare in the late ‘90s. Prior to public service, Jindal worked for the consulting firm McKinsey & Co.

8. In 2003, Gov. Mike Foster, who was finishing his second consecutive term and therefore could not run again, encouraged Jindal to run for governor. Defeated by Democrat Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, Jindal’s first bid for governor was unsuccessful.

9. In 2004, he sought the congressional seat from Louisiana’s First District. He won with a whopping 78 percent of the vote and was re-elected in 2006 with almost 90 percent.

10. In 2007, Jindal ran for governor again and won. The victory was largely attributed to old-fashioned politicking, which included Jindal “giving testimony” in Pentecostal and Baptist churches in rural and remote sections of Louisiana.