Four years ago, Bobby Jindal, first ever Indian American governor, was granted the singular honour of giving the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s maiden State of the Union address. By all accounts, he messed it up and most analysts wrote him off as anything but a worthy challenger.
Jindal clearly learned a bitter lesson on what just one speech watched by the whole nation at prime time could do to the prospects of someone regarded as a rising Republican star. When it came to the 2012 presidential race, Jindal decided to stay away from the fray, sticking to his gubernatorial perch in louisiana and declaring that he had the job he always wanted.
This past week, Jindal bounced back on two fronts and the talk that he might attempt the presidential plunge that has started. For starters, Jindal appears to have redeemed his speaking record, making good use of a second one-on-one speaking opportunity with President Obama. That came about at another Washington annual fixture – the Gridiron Club dinner, where the speakers are expected to poke fun and be at their self-deprecating best. Jindal, as the chosen Republican speaker, did not disappoint, almost matching the president’s humour.
“I have to say, I thought Bobby (Jindal) was incredibly funny this evening. I thought he was terrific,” Obama said later. The tweets coming out of Gridiron echoed Obama’s sentiment. The general consensus was that Jindal brought the house down with his speech, wrote The Washington Post’s blog, The Fix.
“This may surprise you, but I’m looking forward to President Obama’s second term,” said Jindal at the dinner, remarking: “It will be refreshing to hear him stop blaming all the country’s problems on the last four years,” he added.
That was a take-off on Obama who won his recent re-election by continuing to blame America’s ills on his predecessor, George W. Bush.
At another point, Jindal said: “People say that the President and I both have trouble laughing at ourselves. We can’t laugh at ourselves. That would be racist.” Alluding light-heartedly to his own pathetic performance the previous time, Jindal remarked: “You may not realize this, but even though the President may look calm and relaxed, He is sitting here right now quaking in his boots, He’s terrified that I’ll upstage him again, like I did in that State of the Union response a few years ago.”
The 41-year-old Jindal’s second push for the week is something that is set to win accolades for him from the hardcore conservatives of his party. This relates to his unveiling of a plan to eliminate personal income tax and corporate franchise tax in louisiana and substitute them by sales tax.
Some conservative pundits are already raving about it. “Jindal unveiled what could be, if approved by the legislature, the boldest, most pro-growth state tax reform in US history,” wrote Grover Norquist, president of ‘Americans for Tax Reform’, and Patrick Gleason, its director of state affairs. Elimination of IT will imply louisiana foregoing nearly $3 billion in tax revenue. Jindal talks of making good the deficit by raising sales tax from 4 per cent to 5.88 per cent, broadening its application to many services.
He has also proposed a hefty four-fold hike in cigarette tax from 36 cents per pack to $1.41. While it remains a moot point if the State legislature would give the go-ahead, Jindal’s plan is set to endear him even more to his favourite conservative constituency.
little wonder that the man who had been more or less written off four years ago from a national role has started figuring again in the straw poll of probable presidential candidates for 2016 that has been drawn up by the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). The list features as many as 23 persons, mostly Senators and Governors, including New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, former Vice-Presidential candidates Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan and, hold your breath, the other Indian-American governor, Nikki Randhawa Haley of South Carolina, as well.
For Jindal, the seeming turnaround in fortunes is coming just when his approval rating had begun to tumble.
last month, a survey, conducted by Public Policy Polling, had found that only 37 per cent of louisiana voters approved of Jindal’s job performance, with 57 per cent disapproving. This was seen as a far cry from PPP’s previous poll in this southern State in August 2010, when Jindal commanded a 58 per cent approval rating. Jindal, however, was said to be still well-liked by the state’s Republicans, with 59 per cent of them approving of his performance as the US’s first Indian-American Governor. But his support among Independent voters had fallen to 41 per cent.