(No, this post is not about agricultural policy.)
The people of Louisiana, I am told, have found the governor of their dreams. Young, handsome, and – yes – dark, Bobby Jindal is just the kind of God-loving, abortion-hating, budget-balancing Republican – with the obligatorily unscientific views on the descent of man – that leaves movement conservatives quaking with excitement, and exactly the man, if you believe those same movement cheerleaders, to lead his hurricane-ravaged home state into the future.
Why, then, are they so excited to push him out the door? From the Times:
The newly conservative tone of state government is seeping through a host of successful bills — on school vouchers, creationism, stem-cell restrictions and tax and spending cuts — and it is adding to the speculative frenzy here surrounding Mr. Jindal as a potential vice-presidential choice for Senator John McCain.
Politicians here say they are certain that Mr. Jindal would balance a McCain ticket, and not just because he is an Indian-American. The Christian right has a new champion in Mr. Jindal, a serious Catholic who has said that “in my faith, you give 100 percent of yourself to God.”
Bumper stickers saying “Jindal for V.P.” are circulating here, with increased velocity after the governor’s stay two weekends ago at Mr. McCain’s Arizona ranch. Mr. McCain’s schedule has him campaigning in Louisiana next week, according to his Web site.
He has everything McCain is lacking,” said State Representative John LaBruzzo, a Republican, speaking of Mr. Jindal. “He’s seen as a true conservative, which McCain is seen as less than.”
I have written elsewhere that I find this notion – that a party that professes to prize subsidiarity and the authority of local governance should cherry-pick a young, popular, dynamic first-term governor from a poor state where he has barely had the opportunity to do anything and hitch him and his political skills to national politics instead – deeply troubling, for reasons that are perhaps clear enough from the gloss I just gave to it. Here, though, is City Journal’s Nicole Gelinas, in an article I linked to in that DTO piece, making the case in more detail:
… whatever political and executive benefits Jindal might bring the ticket, Louisiana still needs him more than McCain does. The governor is the first competent chief executive Louisiana has had in recent memory, and he’s only begun his work. The state’s physical infrastructure is still subpar: just this week, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that “leaky levees” were “alarming experts.” The city of New Orleans, while making some progress in its physical recovery, remains dangerously fragile; its newly returning residents may yet decide to flee its crime-ridden streets. While New Orleans needs a good mayor to address that problem, the governor can help by using state money as a lever to start reforming the city’s criminal-justice system. And despite some progress in fixing its worst-performing school districts, including in New Orleans, Louisiana’s work here is nowhere near done.
Indeed. Mr. Jindal is a governor, and his responsibilities right now are to the people whose state he has promised to help reform and rebuild. And this seems to me to be a point which many – though not all – of those who have discussed the Jindal-for-Veep meme have failed to address: a governorship is not a mere springboard to something bigger and better, and state and local politics are not (or at least should not be) simply a place for politicians to get some batting practice while they wait for a call to the big leagues. Bobby Jindal’s got work to do in Baton Rouge – find someone else to carry the water for John McCain.
(Photo courtesy of Flickr user Mark V. Genre. Post cross-posted at Postmodern Conservative.)
Filed under: conservatism, government/law, politics
I’m not exactly against the farm system, but I wrote a similar post on Bobby Jindal at my blog.
[...] Check out John Schwenkler’s post on the Jindal for VP meme. He has a somewhat different take on the matter and it’s definitely worth [...]
Thanks for this. I agree with much of what you say, though my own focus is less on his “greenness” (which some say is overrated) than on the importance of local governance and his responsibilities to the people who elected him.
And I agree with you there; I’ve resisted the call to elevate Jim Webb to the vice presidency precisely because Webb has a responsibility to the voters of Virginia, and he can serve us far better as a Senator than he could as a vice presidential nominee, or even a vice president.
There’s been noted buzz of late on rising GOP star Louisiana Gov Bobby Jindal as a McCain prospective Veep. Certainly Jindal is more than very good, However, I believe there’s some “strategerie” going on here. The “real” beneficiary of the Jindal talk is the other rising GOP star, Alaska Gov Sarah Palin. Palin’s got everything that Jindal has (new/exciting, wildly popular, ethics and spending reformer, core conservative etc.) and more — mother of 5 w/remarkable bio, she’s 8 yrs older than Jindal, Alaska energy issue, and set to garner the disenfranchised female Hillary voter (I don’t believe Dem leaders can dump Obama).
Getting Jindal’s name out first — at Team McCain’s BBQ for instance — sets the stage for the obvious choice, Palin. For example, albeit Rush Limbaugh introduced Palin’s name, and later Jindal’s as good Veep choices, of late Rush has been praising the name of Jindal while on his very same shows discussing at great length the frustrated female Hillary voter and the global warming hysteria/need for energy development, without mentioning Palin’s name as the obvious beneficiary of those two issues. Rush walks a fine line, introducing Palin, yet can’t, at least yet, reiterate much, knowing that his praises may be counter-productive to many a swing, moderate and/or formerly Dem voter (who’s against Obama and switching to McCain). Moreover, while I feel that Palin has more real accomplishment, experience and qualification than Obama (and Hillary combined, albeit w/Obama the bar is pretty low), the only potential argument against Palin is she’s a newbie to the national scene. By having Jindal out there first as a VP prospect “passing” the “experience” and “new to the national scene” test, implicitly passes Palin as well. (For that matter Palin’s got as much if not more experience and accomplishment than Florida Gov Crist who’s only been Gov for 2 yrs — and the media has been touting Crist as a VP prospect.)
That’s my thinking at least.
Jindal used Louisiana’s first congressional district as a stepping stone to the Governors mansion (even running for a 2nd term and then once his second term started he started running for Governor).
Why would anyone believe that he wouldn’t do the same thing and use the position of Governor as a springboard to higher office?
Daniel Z. – It’s not a matter of what Jindal would do so much as it is a matter of what the GOP should do. The RNC should understand that there is quite a bit of value in state government (after all, we’re affected much more by the decisions in the state house than we are the decisions in Congress), and allowing a competent governor to finish his obligation to the people who elected him is a bit more important than finding a flashy VP candidate.
[...] is of course entirely on the mark, and that as why – as is neatly entailed by I have said before – if Rod Dreher turns out to be right about John McCain’s Vice Presidential selection, the [...]