Bobby Jindal
May 30th, 2008 at 4:02 pm by David FarrarThis is Bobby Jindal on the Tonight Show. Jindal is Governor of Louisiana, aged just 36, and is one of the possibilities to be McCain’s VP nominee.
Jindal’s parents were immigrants from India, and he started using the name Bobby after he watched the Brady Bunch when he was four!
Not sure if he will be VP, but I think he has a good future ahead of him.
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May 30th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Bobby Jindal is the classical American success story. As stated above his parents came from India to the USA.
Vote:Jindal has been a Rhodes Scholar,involved in the GW Bush White House and elected affairs.
Jindal ran for governor against Kathleen Blanco, the Democrat who more than anybody,certainly more than GW Bush, stuffed up the Katrina disaster.Jindal then 31 was narrowly defeated.
A year later he won a seat in Congress from the state of Louisiana, remember this is a deep south State. He was re-elected once with a massive majority before running and being elected governor of Louisiana.
Louisiana is a state where the standard of government is problematical, this was the home of Huey Long and numerous other Democrats who have gone to jail.
Jindal has made a great start as governor,cleaning up the Katrina mess and pushing thru welfare reform.
Jindal would appeal strongly to mainstream conservatives with a strong record on right to life. He would help McCain here, many right wing Republicans are somewhat nervous about McCain’s ability to cross the partisan aisle to work with people like Ted Kennedy,Russ Feingold and other Democrats. However Jindal has had executive experience as governor, something McCain,Obama and Hillary Clinton have not had.
The question is- “Will Americans tolerate a son of an Indian migrant family to be a beat away from the Presidency ?”
To me, he is more qualified than Obama to be President. Americans are still finding out about Obama, much of which is pretty mixed.
Jindal will figure in GOP politics sooner than you think.
May 30th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
bring down the average age too
Vote:May 30th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
indeed Neil, this guy sounds indeed like the all american dream and has a great future ahead of him if you ask me
o.t. what do you think of the unionist they have send down our way?
Vote:May 30th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
He comes across are a throughly decent guy! With Obama you get the sense there’s something brooding beneath the surface.
Having someone with Indian decent on the McCain ticket would go someway to counter Obama’s race appeal i.e. not a white guy.
I feel encouraged for the Republicans chances after see this guy – though I’d have to learn more about him.
Vote:May 30th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
He dos come across as someone with a deep love of country! This would be a wise selection for VP.
When you have candidates for the two highest offices in the land that include a woman, an African American, an Indian, it makes me wonder if the USA may actually be coming of age!
Vote:May 30th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Bobby Jindal won’t make it I think as VP simply because of the fact he is Indian. I cannot see many of the Conservative evangelicals of the South and the Border States accepting him.
Vote:However I believe Jindal will make the top eventually through his own efforts rather than as VP.
I believe McCain will win come November,but see him pulling out after four years.
Rudi ,interesting comment about Unionists in Clutha Southland. I’m sure we’ll see him pounding the streets of Gore and Balclutha with the few reclusive Labour supporters in the electorate.Labour will be lucky to get 15% in Clutha Southland.
Can see a hell of a mess in Dunedin South for Labour coming up with Benson Pope muddling around.
May 30th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Here’s the best write-up on Bobby Jindal that I’ve seen so far:
(And it is an object lesson – take note everybody)
McCain Veepstakes: Bobby Jindal
by John Gizzi
“Here’s an important pointer for anyone planning on interviewing Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal: Before sitting down with the 36-year-old Republican, clear your schedule all around the time of the interview, because you ask Jindal something, he will always get a detailed answer — and then some.
When we spoke recently, I reminded Jindal of how I last heard him when he was a U.S. House member two years ago, telling a luncheon audience about how people volunteering their services on relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina found they were thwarted by federal regulations. What particularly moved me, I told him, was his story of how a doctor from Pennsylvania was not permitted to treat patients in parts of Louisiana ravaged by the worst natural disaster in American history until he filled out several forms.
“They told him he literally had to mop floors, if you remember, at an airport that he was in where there were people dying.” Jindal told me, “There are thousands of these stories. I talked to a sheriff in an area where they had people with boats that were ready to go in the water and rescue people and they were turned away because they didn’t have proof of registration and insurance, they didn’t bring the right paperwork. The bureaucracy was just awful.”
The 36-year-old governor then proceeded to tell more sad sagas of Americans from other states who were trying to help Louisianans in their worst hour and kept running into a bureaucratic brick wall. Barely stopping for a breath, Jindal vividly contrasted the horror stories of dealing with government bureaucracy in attempts to help Katrina victims to successful relief efforts by non-governmental sources — Wal-Mart, Ford Motor and churches.
“They are so much more responsive, so much more nimble, they can respond so much more quickly than any government bureaucracy you’ll ever see,” said Jindal, who then went into a mini-tirade about how hard it was for local government to get assistance for rebuilding public schools because “instead of giving them that flexibility, [the federal bureaucrats] said we need for you to document every single one of these items that were destroyed.”
That’s the Jindal the picture. In an age of sound bites, Jindal gives you facts, figures, and details. And it works: Four months after becoming the highest-elected Indian American in the nation and the third Republican since Reconstruction to be elected governor of Louisiana, one poll shows the son of Indian immigrants getting high approval ratings from more than 70% of Pelican State voters.
That’s one reason talk of him as John McCain’s running mate is mounting. During a dinner in Indianapolis the night before the May 6 primary, my colleague Jamie Coomarasamy of the BBC observed that Jindal was featured on Page One of the Washington Times that day and had been boomed for Vice President by Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard in his column in the New York Times one day before.
“I’d say it’s Jindal’s week, isn’t it?” said Coomarasamy, echoing what scores of pundits were saying.
The story of the man who was named Piyush Jindal at birth but later insisted on being called “Bobby” (after the youngest brother on TV’s long-running “The Brady Bunch” series) is becoming as well-known to Republicans as the rise of Barack Obama is to Democrats. A graduate of Brown University and a Rhodes Scholar, the young Jindal was an intern with Rep. Jim McCrery (R.-La.); at 24, head of Louisiana’s state Health and Hospitals Department (which accounts for 40% of the state budget); at 27, He then served as executive director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare; at 28, president of the University of Louisiana System (with more than 80,000 students), at 30, and assistant secretary of Health and Human Services for planning and evaluation under George W. Bush.
Jindal narrowly missed election as governor of Louisiana in ’03, rebounded the following year to win a New Orleans-area U.S. House seat, and then captured the governorship with ease last year.
Of the first of two special sessions of the state legislature since Jindal became governor, he says “[We] passed several tough ethics laws trying to change [the state’s] practices from before where people profit by being in government. We passed some very strict rules that say elected officials can’t do business with the state. We also passed disclosure from lobbyists, putting all government spending online, getting rid of free football tickets, a cap for meals. We did several things that will restore people’s trust in the government. We’ve seen the studies that Steve Forbes and others have done saying what we could do to create jobs is to attack corruption.”
Of the second special session, Jindal proudly says “we got rid of a bunch of taxes like the ones on new equipment for utilities; we extended the state’s new market tax credit; which encourages renewal in these enterprise zones. It is interesting, at one point, right after the storms, the Democratic mayor of New Orleans came out and said to the federal government, why don’t you make the city a tax-free zone? If you do that, that will do more to stimulate the rebuilding than a whole lot of the money you’ all are sending down here. And nobody at the federal level pursued that idea. I think as conservatives, we have fundamental core beliefs of different policies and the role of government we think are better for people, for their quality of life.”
Meshing traditional conservative ideas such as tax cuts with newer concepts such as tax-free zones is an example of why, aside from his youth and moving life story, Jindal is increasingly talked of for national office.
At a time when even conservatives recoil from talk of abolishing some government agencies such as the Department of Education, Louisiana’s governor talks proudly of how he brought a Fortune 500 executive in to run the state Department of Labor and “in four months he has already proposed getting rid of his department. Why not come up with regional business councils, where the majority of the businesses are actual business owners, instead of the government’s going to the business owners and saying this is what we think you need in terms of training programs, and work force. They’re the customers, put them in charge of it.”
Whenever Jindal talks about shutting down a government agency such as the Department of Labor, he couples it, if he thinks it necessary with an immediate call for a positive alternative. In dismissing his state’s “charity hospitals”, a legacy of Huey Long’s governorship in the 1930s, as old and out-dated (“It doesn’t have the premiums, it doesn’t have the deductibles, it has very modest co-pays.”), Jindal makes a passionate pitch for “private coverage to involve health-savings accounts, purchasing pools, tax credits — and it’s going to involve changing the way that Medicaid and SCHIP operate.”
Like other conservatives in the Republican Governors Association, Gov. Jindal was critical of the $35 billion State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) bill passed by the Democratic-controlled Congress and vetoed by President Bush. But, he quickly adds, Republicans must come up with a more private-sector and business-oriented alternative to SCHIP, and to Medicaid as well. Louisiana, which spends more per capita on health-care than surrounding states, provides “a tremendous opportunity for change throughout the state, and it will help our business community, ” says Jindal.
So what does Jindal think of becoming the Republican vice presidential candidate with John McCain? Before posing the question, I noted that former Rep. Bob Livingston (R.-La.) had recently told me he hopes Jindal doesn’t become Vice President because it would put liberal Democratic Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu. Brother of Sen. Mary Landrieu, into the governor’s mansion.
“It is very, very flattering,” Jindal says of the Veep talk, “But I’ve got the job that I want.
This is an historic opportunity to change our state. We won’t get a chance like this in our lifetimes again. I do not want to turn down something that I have not been offered. I have had several conversations with the senator and we have not talked about the vice-presidency,. I am very, very happy with the job that I have. I’ve got the job that I want. You can tell Bob that I am planning to run for re-election.”
By that election day in 2011, Jindal will be 39 — and still have plenty of time for national politics.”
John Gizzi is Political Editor of HUMAN EVENTS.
Vote:May 30th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Ah….
So this is the guy who inspired that New York Times front-page headline:
What – you guys didn’t see that?
Vote:May 30th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Jindal is probably the most exciting young Republican politician since Nixon back in the ’40s. I suspect it will be a case of when, not if, he becomes President. But he has also barely been elected to the Governor’s office. McCain would be smart to pick him, but Jindal would be smarter to refuse.
Gotta love that cajun accent though. Seems so weird coming from an Indian guy!
Vote:May 30th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Jindal supports the teaching of intelligent design in public schools.[29] He addressed this issue during a September 2007 televised gubernatorial debate:
[L]et’s talk about intelligent design. I’m a biology major. That’s my degree. The reality is there are a lot of things that we don’t understand. There’s no theory in science that could explain how, contrary to the laws of entropy, you could create order out of chaos. There’s no scientific theory that explains how you can create organic life out of inorganic matter
Wikipedia..
WHich would be interesting but he forgets ONE thing .. The SUN
Vote:May 30th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
I’m more concerned about how, if President, the American public will handle the first pitch of the baseball season being a right-arm offbreak.
Vote:May 30th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
OHHHHH another Wikipedia reference from the huge brain that is GWW – fuck off, you onanistic idiot.
Vote:June 1st, 2008 at 4:31 am
“Bobby Jindal won’t make it I think as VP simply because of the fact he is Indian. I cannot see many of the Conservative evangelicals of the South and the Border States accepting him.”
Complete nonsense. How, then, did he get elected in Louisiana?
He’s got quite a career ahead of him, but I think he has plenty to do in Louisiana now.
Vote: