Jindal’s blitz (updated)
Update: Here’s the CNN interview.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer ran an interview with Bobby Jindal today keying off conservative douchebag Rush Limbaugh’s claim that Jindal should be McCain’s preferred veep, and is potentially yet another Ronald Reagan. I had somehow escaped actually hearing Jindal speak until today. Despite being diametrically opposed to his social conservatism, hard line against abortion and odd belief in exorcism, I found his oratorical abilities impressive.
He’s clearly a Southern native. His accent sounded authentic to these uneducated Californian ears. He came across as crisp, focused and eminently reasonable, repeatedly stressing that Louisiana is a majority Dem state with a majority Dem legislature, and he’s willing to cross the aisle to work with the other party. Like any smart politician, he put his state first, praising Obama as a candidate of hope, and McCain and Hillary as well, to get them to focus on helping Louisiana. Ever the muck-stirrer, Blitzer pressed Jindal on what he’d do if McCain asked him to be vice president. ‘He’s not going to ask me,’ Jindal said, for a second flashing a smile and straying off message.
Stylistically, he was excellent - smart but earnest. It is no easy thing to be a young, up-and-coming political operator and still sound like an average Joe. John Edwards’ patent phoniness to anyone with a modicum of speech training shows the perils of not having the touch. Either you’re born with it, which is rare, or you have to polish and repeat and rehearse it for so many hours in the uncomfortable mirror of a camcorder that at long last it sounds unrehearsed. That, my friends, is another level of slickness. He was so slick, he didn’t even sound slick. That’s Jobsian. That’s Demosthenes.
Jindal, though faster-talking and more wonkish than Mike Huckabee, had some of the same warmth. Together, Jindalbee draw a smiley face upon science denial and hard-right social conservatism, because they’re people you could very much have over for a beer. Here’s a Jindal interview from last October on MSNBC’s Hardball:
on Monday, February 18th, 2008, 6:18 pm in Bobby Jindal, Politics, TV, Video clips › 
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I’ve said it before and I will say it again. There is not a chance in hell that he gets offered the VP spot nor a chance in hell he accept if he did. :)
Look for him in 2012 or 2016
This is great. Thanks!
Wo! I’ve never heard him speak either. That caught me by surprise.
Also, that’s some serious photoshop action going on there.
Proof that beauty and brains can be mutually exclusive?
On second thought, I could be totally wrong. Let’s hope she’s one of those elusive, hip “alternadesis” who wears clothing ironically I’ve been reading about when I’m not enjoying my evening newspaper with a hot glass of jeera tea, oil pulling after going my morning stretches, or engaging in any other similarly unhip, outmoded, desh-based behavior. ‘Fess up guys, y’all know I’m not the only one.
Y’know who else was a good speaker? HITLER.
Jindal gets no love from me.
agreed, darth paul!
I call Godwin’s Law.
I’m confused, just as the ever astute and simply brilliant Wolf seems to be. Surely Jindal is going to vote for the “best person”, not the “Republican nominee, whoever it may be” “once the process has taken its course”? He seems like such a sane guy with beliefs grounded in rationality after all.
Wolf Blitzer:
“There are similarities between you and Obama. You are both young ….”
What a stupid statement. What else is similar between Obama and Jindal??
Yay, my favorite game since when I was 3! But I’ve got 4, yes 4 in this week’s edition of spot-the-similarities.
1. Barack and Jindal both have 6 letters. Bobby and Obama both have 5 letters.
2. They both seriously think that non Christians will burn for ever in a blazing ball of fire.
3. They both have peen-peens.
4. They both believe in intelligent design.
I don’t know, might have got one or two wrong.