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He Could Have Easily Shaken Things Up

September 29, 2008 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Election 2008 

“I think he worked very hard, and I think he did a commendable job.” – former Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco (D) on Governor Bobby Jindal’s performance during Hurricane Gustav.

In her Pajamas Media article, Bridget Johnson of the Rocky Moutain News thinks the smarter choice for McCain’s VEEP would have been Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. Like Gov. Palin he would have brought youth and energy to the ticket, except with a substantial policy portfolio that includes:

  • Homeland Security, as a member of the corresponding House Committee and as vice-chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attacks.
  • Education, as President of the Louisiana State University system.
  • Healthcare, as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Planning and Evaluation, Director of the National Bipartisan Commission on Medicare, an as Budget Director for the Louisiana Department of Health an Hospitals.
  • Business and the Economy, as a consultant for Fortune 500 Companies.
  • Emergency Management, as Governor of Louisiana during Hurricane season.

The Ivy League-educated and Oxford Rhodes scholar also has the propensity for governmental reform and has demonstrated himself as slasher of wasteful spending. Early this year, he delivered on his promise to veto pay increases for legislators and has established some of the toughest ethics laws in the nation.

The reasons Sen. McCain overlooked him were obvious. First, Gov. Jindal may have been a liability during hurricane season; the MSM would have intensely and incessantly focused on his performance. Second, though he would have revved up the conservative base, his candidacy couldn’t have created the positive effect of pulling women voters from Sen. Clinton’s camp.

Nevertheless, he would have personified Sen. McCain’s maverick status as a young and unconventional pick, and his leadership in the “eye of the storm” (Hurricane Gustav) would have overturned the conventional wisdom of bureaucratic red tape, and would have effectively reduced Sen. Obama’s “politics of hope” as a mere pipe dream. Jindal is already leading in reality.



Comments

4 Responses to “He Could Have Easily Shaken Things Up”

  1. John H. Taylor on September 30th, 2008 7:49 am

    How would he have voted on the rescue plan — with the Hoover Republicans in the House?

  2. Jonathan C. Movroydis on September 30th, 2008 8:13 am

    It’s interesting. Though Gov. Jindal is a reformer, he isn’t entirely a doctrinaire. As recently as this week, he has pleaded for millions in Hurricane disaster relief and is working to secure funds to repair infrastructure. According to Doug McCollum of the Wall Street Journal, Gov. Jindal also used his budget surpluses to allocate more than $800 million to fix levees, roads, ports, and schools, as well as to create a biomedical research center and to pay down pension obligations.

    So bets are that he would have voted for some government intervention. Maybe not the Paulson plan, but perhaps something in the vein of what Chile did in the 1980’s (loans and collateral to re-capitalize banks/borrower repo). O’Grady’s article in the WSJ touches excellently on this:

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122265260912184329.html#articleTabs%3Dvideo

  3. David Emig on September 30th, 2008 9:42 am

    Still don’t know how you might think that Palin attracts Clinton voters, especially on question of choice.

  4. Jonathan C. Movroydis on September 30th, 2008 9:58 am

    Because I don’t think women go to the booth and punch their ballot based on the criteria of abortion. Certainly there is a degree of identity politicking and a woman like Palin better personifies there predicament and are certainly disgruntled about HRC’s media treatment in the primaries and her VP snub.

    As Noemie Emery, notes in the Weekly Standard not all women are not bitter clingers to old Steinem-style feminism. I think this is a correct line of rationale. Otherwise it begs the question of whether HRC was a single-issue candidate.

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