Down in the bayou

To me, one truism has always been that we get the government that we deserve. Now I'm not so sure anymore.

I'm thinking particularly of the unfortunate souls in Louisiana who've had Bobby Jindal thrust upon them as their leader:

Jindal was something of a disaster. The delivery was awkward and sing-song (comparisons to Kenneth from "30 Rock" are ubiquitous). The arguments were tone deaf and tiresome. The anecdotes were long and pointless. Jindal hadn't quite practiced enough with a teleprompter. He not only seemed like a guy selling a bad product in an infomercial, Jindal seemed like he was new at it.

It was painful to watch, both because the speech was bad and because it was hard not to feel bad for the guy embarrassing himself on national television.

Ok, so maybe it's not fair to draw too many conclusions about his political viability based on a single speech. A speech that is generally a set-up for failure; hardly anyone ever comes off as a winner in the response to a State of the Union-style address.

So, what then of Jindal's actual record? As I noted the other day, he's been quite overrated for a long time now. He once lost to Kathleen Blanco, for chrissakes.

The comparisons to Obama? Uh ...

It's unclear what prompts the comparison between the two other than that they are both young, brown, Ivy League-educated, and beloved by their respective bases. But it's a comparison that the monochromatic Republican Party, anxious to show its inclusiveness, has been happy to accept. That makes it no less inane, and no less transparent an attempt to put a nonwhite face on an increasingly white party.

Jindal and Obama could not be more different, and the contrasts begin but don't end with the fact that one of them changed his name to fit in while the other carried his daddy's "funny" African moniker all the way to the White House.

As the First Lady noted last night, it's highly doubtful that Jindal's father ever called him "Bobby" at a young age. He probably called him Piyush, his given Indian name which apparently means "drink of the Gods." (Also, can you imagine the shitstorm Obama would have faced this fall if he'd publicly referred to himself as something, like, Timmy?)

So yes, Jindal obviously isn't ready for prime time. And he might never be.

But somewhat overlooked last night was his anecdotal Katrina reference to the late Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee. To put it nicely, Sheriff Lee's legacy will not get the GOP out beyond the cutting edge. This, from his obit in the New York Times:

Sheriff Lee always vigorously denied he was a racist. But with his aggressive — and loudly announced — policing of blacks who dared to cross the parish line from New Orleans into Jefferson, he seemed to give voice to a heavily white jurisdiction that sent the Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke to the State Legislature in 1989. This constituency had voted with its feet decades earlier by abandoning the black dominated city.

In 1986, he drew national attention to his normally unremarked-on kingdom of shopping strips and subdivisions when he announced, after a spate of robberies, “If there are some young blacks driving a car late at night in a predominantly white area, they will be stopped.”

... Up to the end, Sheriff Lee continued to issue provocative statements about race and crime. In 2006, he stirred up a final firestorm when he said, discussing a new plan to focus on violence, “We’re only stopping black people.”

In all, it was a provocative bit of hagiography on a night when my sympathy deepened for my old friends in Louisiana. Now it seems as if they'll be stuck with Jindal for another three years, and probably more, depending on the rallying power of the state Democrats.

Either way, you've got to think the wheels are coming completely off that "Jindal in '12" bandwagon. If not, then the GOP seems headed for a ditch. Or, better yet, a bayou.