I rarely read Bill Kristol, a reliable reciter of GOP talking points. He’s what in radio terms one would dismiss as a repeater, someone who retransmits a signal handed down from party mandarins.

But his position as a propaganda tool is precisely what makes his latest trial balloon intriguing:

… if we run a traditional campaign; our numbers will gradually regress toward the (losing) generic Republican number. Maybe that’s why… 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… “You want generational change? You can get it with McCain-Jindal — without risking a liberal and inexperienced Obama as commander in chief”… McCain spent considerable time with Jindal in New Orleans recently, and reportedly found him… personally engaging and intellectually impressive… [Link]

So: Dubya’s incompetence with Hurricane Katrina enabled Governor Jindal. Dubya’s disastrous war enabled candidate Obama and maverick McCain. And candidate Obama enables VP candidate Jindal. In one sense, it’s a chain reaction of unusual circumstances, thanks to Dubya.

In another sense, McCain is pinching the Dems’ usual strategy for balancing a presidential ticket. When Michael Dukakis ran, Dems balanced the ethnic middle-aged guy from the northeast with an old white guy from the South. Now that the GOP has an old white guy from the West, they’re talking about balancing him with a young ethnic guy from the South.

If Jindal were to get the VP nod, still highly unlikely in the GOWMP (grand old white male…), he’d again have Dubya to thank for it. We’d have an even more historic race on our hands. Should McCain-Jindal win, even more unlikely since McCain wants to double down on the war, black Americans would likely be angered and toss out their Gandhi bios, and conservatives would play up desis as model minorities. (For that matter, Obama’s rise itself says good things about race relations in America.)

To get totally fanciful here, should President McCain expire in office due to his advancing age, we’d have an Indian-American U.S. president, first lady and kids. Should he serve out his term uneventfully, Jindal would be positioned to run in a later election. But either way, Indian-Americans would have both a higher-profile brand and one unalterably linked with right-wing social conservatism. Which would please few but the devotees of Modi.

The time is ripe for both Jindal and Obama. Times of economic stress (not national security crises) favor those who do not fit the standard mold. These are times when mavericks, minorities, immigrants and entrepreneurs soar.

Dubya is currently the least popular American president ever, and most historians call him a failure, the worst president ever. The Iraq war is less popular than Vietnam. It’s a measure of Republican desperation that they see identity politics as a potential savior: young vs. young, brown vs. brown. The squawk boxes can’t be happy.

To recap: Hillary Clinton is now running a hard-right campaign, the GOP nominee is contemplating a brown veep pick, and the frontrunner for the American presidency is a biracial senator from Hawaii, a state five hours behind Eastern Standard and the last state to join the union. Interesting times.