Miscellaneous Jindalia

Um....so, today in Latin at the beginning of class I had the bright idea of doing a post about Horace's Ars Poetica and the oddness of reading it in the 20th century and tying in my music theory class and fun stuff like that. Five hours later as I was leaving Latin I decided I didn't want to talk about the Ars Poetica for a few days. So I'll go to my original idea - Bobby Jindal, because I am a topical person.

So Obama gave his semi-state of the union speech on Tuesday and I watched some of it. You know what to expect - everyone from Congress is there, all the cabinet members and supreme court folks and surprise guests, and they all applaud him every three lines. One girl in my dorm astutely noted that he was actually getting a lot of standing ovations too which didn't happen at the Bush speeches. The upshot is that it was very grand and he came across as an important person and you know Obama's a good speaker and can deliver a good speech.

Anyway, there's always a response to the State of the Union delivered by a member of the opposition party. In 2008 it was Kathleen Sebelius, governor of Kansas. She's a nice lady and good governor, but her response was pretty bland and forgettable as I recall. Even liberals weren't enthusiastic. But like I said, forgettable. No one besides me remembers that she even gave a response. In 2007 it was Jim Webb, senator from Virginia and real hardass, ex military guy, Scots-Irish, born fighting. His address was pretty tough and forthright and aggressively populist, talking about the greed of the rich and the suffering of the middle class. His response was actually good. He also followed George Bush who by that time was about as popular as AIDS in the USA. (Still is.) But...besides Webb, State of the Union (SOTU) responses are generally pretty forgettable and not very good. I mean, part of it is staging. The responder isn't being applauded every three lines by most of Congress. It's hard to rewrite the speech on the fly to actually be a response - I assume they're all written before the president actually gives his speech.

And in 2009 the Republicans selected a young buck named Bobby Jindal (who I like to think of as Robert Jindal - his real name is Piyush) to be the sacrificial responder. Sooo...who is Bobby Jindal? Let's go over this quickly: went to Brown, was a Rhodes Scholar, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, president of the University of Louisiana system, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Planning and Evaluation, 2003 Republican candidate for governor (he lost), Congressman from LA-01, and finally Governor of Louisiana, elected in 2007. Oh yeah, he's 37 years old. So he's a real prodigy, flitting from one job to the next, and probably angling to be president. He's a rising star of the Republican party.

I mean, who else is there? Sarah Palin, who we all learned about. Forgettable governors like Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Mark Sanford of South Carolina. Um, Michael Steele? The Republicans want their own Obama. Right now it's audition time. The response was Jindal's audition.

Let's go to the videotape! Text. Starts off by talking about his own story and it's a hopeful story and all of that. It's a good story, too. Then he talks about Katrina - ruh roh. He's saying that the federal government didn't do a good job during Katrina (definitely) and tells a story about charity during that time. His point is that charity is what helps, not government. Now, couple problems here. One, that story is probably a lie. Two, the problem with Katrina was there wasn't enough government. People shouldn't have to give money to charity so New Orleans can recover. Helping New Orleans recover is the government's job. We can't ask charity to take up the slack, because charity is simply not enough. It's not powerful enough.

Jindal talks about the Republican ideas, which as best as I can tell mostly are tax cuts. One, we all know that Republicans stand for tax cuts. That's not a new idea, that's not a bold solution. Two, anyone watching this response after Obama heard Obama talking about how the stimulus bill gives 95% of Americans tax cuts. It's the largest middle class tax cut in history. And where would we be without awful examples of pork! A maglev line from LA to Vegas? Sign me up! (Perhaps some Republicans don't know that maglev trains already exist?) Volcano monitoring? Mt. St. Helens. YELLOWSTONE. Perhaps hurricane monitoring is also an outrageous example of pork...but maybe it's a public good! It is. Anyway blah blah blah, talks briefly about other things. He doesn't really go into specifics, but it's supposed to be a short speech. He talks about how Republicans need to stand for limited government.

Oh yeah, I loved that too. By now I'm convinced that there's only one Republican who as president would fight for limited government, and his name is Ron Paul. Bush greatly expanded the government. The way I see it, government wants to expand and it's hard to stop it from expanding. And plenty of Republicans are comfortable with expanding the government, seeing as how they mostly voted in lockstep for the policies Bush wanted. So yeah, don't ever believe a Republican who says he will work for limited government besides Ron Paul.

He ends on a note of hope and it's over. So let's talk about my favorite part - his speaking mannerisms. He sounded like someone in a video that plays at a museum, or a museum guide, or someone reading to elementary school children, or I dunno what - but he didn't sound like he was talking to America as adults. (Obama did.) His speaking style really was distracting and detracted from his substance (such as it was). I really thought that he would do better - he's a bright guy, a real policy wonk. But...yeah, stylistically he failed. And another thing I loved was the reaction. Fox News panned it, and every other diary on Daily Kos the next day was making fun of him. My point is his speech was bad, but it was NOT forgettable. It was epic fail. People will remember this speech, people besides me. I understand some Republicans have questioned the wisdom of even doing a response to Obama's State of the Union speeches. (Good idea - whenever McCain made a big speech after Obama during the campaign, he seemed dreadful.) I understand Rush Limbaugh praised the speech, but hardly anyone else has. (Have to throw in - I watched a couple of other Jindal interviews and he does act like a normal human in them.)

So, to go back to the rising star thing - I'm liking the theory that this was Jindal's audition to be the Republican Obama. That means the Republicans wanted the equivalent of, perhaps, Obama's 2004 keynote speech or better yet a real asskicking take no prisoners speech. Something a little mean. I don't really think Jindal's capable of doing that. I don't view him as mean, and he's not a real fighter like Jim Webb. So, it wasn't that Jindal was terrible (although I thought he did badly) it's that Jindal wasn't amazing. What does this mean? The auditions for the Republican Obama go on. Perhaps Joe the Plumber will deliver a major policy address. Or, if the Republicans want to move in the direction of sanity - heh, not worried about that yet. By now all that's left in the Republican party are bedrock conservatives. No moderation allowed. Still, though, Charlie Crist (governor of Florida) and Jon Huntsman (governor of Utah) would prove a profitable line of inquiry if Republicans continue to fail to find their Obama.

Oh hey I made it through the whole entry without once mentioning that Jindal was Ind