My story on Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is up on the Web site this morning. The governor allowed me to spend a few hours with him in Baton Rouge and Shreveport, and he said he has no interest in being the running mate to Sen. John McCain, and criticized the Bush administration for its approach to healthcare and immigration. Click here to read it.
The 36-year old governor has said for weeks now that Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, is not going to ask him to be his vice-president candidate. And Mr. Jindal makes a compelling case for why he should stay in his current job (see the story in today's paper).
But in this morning's New York Times, William Kristol becomes the third prominent conservative columnist (after Gerald Seib and Bob Novak) to mention Mr. Jindal as a real possibility for the GOP's No. 2 spot, and reports that the McCain campaign is thinking seriously about Mr. Jindal, following Mr. McCain's trip to Louisiana on April 24 and 25.
And the McCain campaign knows the environment for Republicans remains toxic. They noticed that on Saturday night Republicans lost their second House seat in a special election in two months — this one in a district they had held since 1974 and that Bush had carried by almost 20 points in 2004.
Another McCain staffer called my attention to this finding in the latest Fox News poll: McCain led Obama in the straight match-up, 46 to 43. Voters were then asked to choose between two tickets, McCain-Romney vs. Obama-Clinton. Obama-Clinton won 47 to 41.
That reversal of a three-point McCain lead to a six-point deficit for the McCain ticket suggests what might happen (a) when the Democrats unite, and (b) if McCain were to choose a conventional running mate, who, as it were, reinforced the Republican brand for the ticket. As the McCain aide put it, this is what will happen if we run a traditional campaign; our numbers will gradually regress toward the (losing) generic Republican number.
Maybe that's why, in separate conversations last week, no fewer than four McCain staffers and advisers mentioned as a possible vice-presidential pick the 36-year-old Louisiana governor, Bobby Jindal. They're tempted by the idea of picking someone so young, with real accomplishments and a strong reformist streak.
It might also be a way to confront the issue of McCain's age (71), which private polls and focus groups suggest could be a real problem. A Jindal pick would implicitly acknowledge the questions and raise the ante. The message would be: "You want generational change? You can get it with McCain-Jindal — without risking a liberal and inexperienced Obama as commander in chief." I would add that it was after McCain spent considerable time with Jindal in New Orleans recently, and reportedly found him, as he has before, personally engaging and intellectually impressive, that the campaign's informal name-dropping of Jindal began.
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UPDATE — 9:40 a.m. — The Club for Growth's Nachama Soloveichik has a back to earth column on the "Jindal obsession" that says he is not experienced enough and includes a list of questionable votes.
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In his speech at the National Press Club on Friday, Mr. Jindal joked about how the Press Club had had "a pretty exciting Monday," referring to the speech there by Sen. Barack Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
"My disclaimer is I don't intend to be nearly as entertaining or as newsworthy as Reverend Wright. So I hope I'm not going to disappoint you," said Mr. Jindal, the son of Indian immigrants.
"Indeed, the day after I was elected governor, we had a press conference," Mr. Jindal continued. "And I was asked by the Louisiana press corps how I intended to celebrate my victory. And I warned them: I said, my intention is to go down in history as one of Louisiana's most boring, but hopefully most effective, governors. My wife tells me we've got the boring part down just fine. Now we've got to work on the effective."
Mr. Jindal, the youngest governor in the U.S., brought the House Speaker and State Senate President, a Republican and Democrat, to the Press Club with him for his speech. He says often that Hurricane Katrina has offered Louisiana a unique chance to reform, and elaborated on that theme.
"I'm not here to tell you that Katrina was a good thing. We lost over 1,000 people, hundreds of billions of dollars of damage. But we have got a chance to rebuild better than what was there before the storms," Mr. Jindal said.
— Jon Ward, White House correspondent, The Washington Times
