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Jindal has probably the toughest decision of any potential contender. On the one hand, being a son of immigrants and a minority, is going to be a useful and potent narrative in any election cycle. And arguably, its power will be diminished following a President Obama, who ran on a similar sort of narrative. People might just be fed up with “young and diverse” in 2012. On the other hand, because of Obama’s election, Republicans are probably more willing tha they’d ordinarily be to practice a little affirmative action. Though Jindal doesn’t really NEED that sort of help, it’s an advantage that shouldn’t be lightly disregarded. Jindal needs to consider that while Obama had a natural constituency in Democratic primaries, to overcome occasional racist impulses, Jindal is pretty much out in the cold.
There is no significant base of Asian or Indian Republicans. In an ordinary election year, as Jindal’s 2003 bid for Governor showed, a minority candidate would probably have a hard time winning over all of the traditionally Republican constituencies. This is not because Republicans are uniquely racist- though there are probably a fair amount of openly racist Republicans- but because there’s no natural constituency in the Republican Party that will promote minorities. Democrats have latte liberals, blacks, and young people who were able to push Obama forward, which more then compensated for the racists among Democratic core constituencies. Republicans have few minorities, almost no equivalent to latte liberals, and very few young people. The vast majority of Republicans simply don’t care about race, but those who do are basically uniformly disinclined to vote for minorities. So Jindal might have a harder time running in a year where Republicans aren’t looking for their “Republican Obama” and unless Obama is wildly successful, they won’t be come 2016; by then any inclination to favor minority candidates will have dissipated. Jindal will have to win it on the merits, which he can no doubt, but he’ll be trying to run against a headwind. He’ll be trying, like Romney in 2008, to win over an electorate that will give him few bonus points for “diversity”, but which has a number of elements hostile to that diversity.
There’s also this reality: if he runs in 2012, he’ll be running to be the youngest President ever. That’s a new narrative altogether, and unlike the minority/immigrant narrative, it won’t last. By 2016, he’ll be a young, but not stupendously young, 45. That’d be a good thing if Jindal was an Obama- a charismatic, smart, but not necessarily wonkish politician- but it’s not clear to me that Jindal’s going to get any more impressive in the intervening 4 years. It’s hard to imagine anyone doubting, even in 2012, that Jindal could handle the Presidency, from a sheer competence standpoint. Indeed, because he’s not all that charismatic, and at times seems like a hyper competent wonk in a politician’s suit, extreme youth is probably an asset. 40 year old’s spouting 15-point plans are “impressive”, “wunderkinds”, etc. 50 year old’s spouting 15-point plans are bureacrats. Bureacrat’s don’t win elections; wunderkinds fare much better.
This goes back to a thought I had about Obama towards the beginning of the 2008 campaign: that he would be a much more dangerous opponent with significant executive experience, and some gray in his hair. Obama’s major weakness was his strength: the power of his oratory, the extreme emotions he inspired- all these potentially diminished his seriousness as a candidate. McCain’s greatest success came during the “celebrity campaign” precisely because, due to Obama’s relative inexperience and youth, he was uniquely vulnerable to such charges. Had Obama run in 2016, with 6 years as Governor under his belt, his oratory would have been no less powerful and he would have probably inspired as many people, but any attempt to paint him as unserious would have failed miserably. Jindal is in precisely the opposite position. His strength is his great seriousness. He’s hyper-competent and he’s been both appointed and elected to offices. Plus, he’s a Catholic, who’s supported some very Catholic (read strict) positions; the Intelligent Design bill, the castration law, his abortion stance, etc. In an ordinary election, his opponents would use these things to dehumanize him. Blanco tried that in 2003, with considerable success. But, this attack becomes almost inoperative if he runs in 2012; how can the youngest candidate ever be TOO serious? How can a 41 year old nominee be “out of touch”? Young people are supposed to be IN TOUCH, aren’t they?
I won’t pretend that, by 2016, Jindal will be an old man. He’d still be younger then Obama was this election cycle and only 2 or 3 men will have ascended to the Presidency at a younger age. But, as time passes those qualities- the lack of charisma, the strict Catholicism, the bureacratic wonkishness, the extreme social conservatism- will become genuine liabilities. This all doesn’t necessitate a 2012 run, but it certainly makes it worth considering.
December 1st, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Just a small nit-pick: Catholics (should) believe in evolution.
h++p://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_and_the_Roman_Catholic_Church
December 1st, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I know Jindal well – and have had a chance to see him up close. Brilliant man with amazing abilities. He won’t run in 2012. Why? 2016 will be a better shot for him (likely) and he truly is committed to turning around LA, which means a second term as Governor.
December 1st, 2008 at 3:52 pm
I wasn’t using Catholic in the strictly religious sense, but in a more cultural sense. The word Catholic just draws to mind strictness, authority, seriousness, etc. Catholic’s who seem to confirm that stereotype- Jindal does because he’s not terribly charismatic, he supports a number of very strict social positions, he’s very direct and very wonkish- are going to be easily pigeonholed. Sarah Palin was easily pigeonholed, in part, because she kept doing things that confirmed the public’s conception of evangelicals and Alaskans. Pawlenty, in contrast, is inarguably more closely tied to evangelicals, but he doesn’t seem evangelical, so can get away with it. Jindal is much closer to a Catholic version of Palin then a Catholic version of Pawlenty. He might be able to get away with that image in a national election, in so much as Catholicism isn’t inextricably linked to Republicanism, but it’d be alot easier for an extremely young Catholic to avoid the stereotypical Catholic brush.
December 1st, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Hm. Good points. His youth is part of what makes him so appealing. There’s just the question of pushing too much of our new blood to the forefront too quickly.
Another wildcard: don’t put it out of the question that Obama might ditch Biden in ‘12 for Hillary, setting Hillary up to be the next-in-line for the Democrats.
December 1st, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Alex,
I understand the “putting too much new blood too quickly” point. I often make the baseball comparison: teams that bring up all their prospects early normally end up with no farm system, and a group of rookies who are destined to perform perennially below their potential. The problem, for Jindal, though, is that he’s not a politician. He’s 5′8 and weighs like 115 pounds for goodness sake. He’s too wonky, too Catholic, and too dry to make much sense at the national level, all things being equal. In baseball terms, he’s like a knuckleballer 2 years before anyone’s ever heard of a knuckleball; capable of being extremely effective, short term, but lacking the essential tools that make star baseball pitchers. Republicans nominate heroes (Eisenhower, Dole, Bush I) they nominate stars (Reagan, Bush II); possibly they nominate culture warriors. But, there’s simply no emerging constituency, anywhere in the Republican Party, for short-non-heroic, wonky, strict Catholics. But, even worse, there’s no emerging constituency for this sort of person among the broader electorate. As far as politicians go, Jindal simply doesn’t compute. As he gets older, and becomes less of a wunderkind, those explicitly non-political traits will become big liabilities. He has a window, where he can hide the fact that he’s essentially a bureaucrat in political shoes, because he’s young and he’s diverse. But, youth doesn’t last forever, and diversity will be in lesser demand 8 years from now.
December 1st, 2008 at 5:19 pm
I agree, and again, all of this points to the perfect reason to put Jindal on the bottom of the ticket in 2012. Let him gain some star power, name ID, and adoration that he otherwise wouldn’t have gotten running for the top spot so soon. Get him in the spotlight when he’s young, and then give him the shot at the White House in 8 years after folks love him.
December 1st, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Jindal-Palin– dream ticket?
December 1st, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Matthew,
Young people TEND to be more “in touch” – they are not so automatically. Jindal’s youth may earn him a presumption of in-touchedness, but it will have to be born out. You don’t survive 2 years on a presidential campaign without having every presumption about you examined in full.
Plus, I dont understand at all your logic which leads you to claim that criticisms about his extreme and absurd positions, like the ID law or his abortion position, will somehow be inoperative because he is so young. You seem to confuse extremism with seriousness, and I dont think the people are so confused.
December 1st, 2008 at 6:11 pm
I despise ID but the truth is very few people lose votes by quietly holding a position in favor of “teaching both sides”.
I’m of one mind with Ken Miller against ID but the truth is, being mildly in favor of ID doesn’t hurt a candidate.
I was disappointed when Pawlenty came out in favor of ID (after years of silence he was pressed on the issue this Sept.). At least he leaves the choice to local school boards (ID won’t get too much support there luckily).
December 1st, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Jindal will not run in 2012. You heard it here first.
December 1st, 2008 at 6:24 pm
JA Pruce,
Actually, we heard it from Jindal first. If you want to predict he will run, that would be a prediction worth mentioning.
December 1st, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Tano,
“Young people TEND to be more “in touch” – they are not so automatically. Jindal’s youth may earn him a presumption of in-touchedness, but it will have to be born out. You don’t survive 2 years on a presidential campaign without having every presumption about you examined in full.”
This is only partially true. People tend to make evaluations of candidates based on certain archetypes. Mitt Romney could get away with saying “I don’t care much about rich people”, arguing for “fair trade”, and running on a tax cut for people making under 250k, precisely because people just assumed he was a staunch economic conservative. How could a businessman be anything else? Voters were left with cognitive dissonance, and conservatives largely resolved it by reverting to their archetype for businessmen. This happened with Huckabee too; the Huckster ran on economic populism, anti-Wall Street rhetoric etc, but because he was a Southern Preacher, the majority voters ultimately lumped him in the “extreme conservative” category. Huckabee could have called for confiscation of private property, and voters would have still had a hard time ditching their “Southern Preacher” archetype.
The point here is that it matters an awful lot where you start off. If you’re a staunch Catholic, you’re going to have a difficult time selling yourself to a more moderate public. If you’re a wonk, you’re going to have a hard time selling yourself as “interesting” or “exciting”. But, if you’re young, both of these problems are minimized, because voters have a certain image of youth that tends to cut against both those ideas. Voters will experience some cognitive dissonance between youth- which they associate with excitement and looseness- and your actual stances/style. In other words, if Jindal’s youth is an overriding theme, which it would be in 2012, Obama would have a harder time using his conservatism and wonkishness against him. Because, it wouldn’t compute. In a year where his youth was merely incidental (i.e, he wasn’t vying to become the youngest President ever), it’d be easier for opponents to paint him as an extreme Catholic and an out of touch wonk.
December 1st, 2008 at 6:41 pm
A similar thing occurred with Sarah Palin: with one or two exceptions, Palin spent September and October railing against Wall Street, talking about how much she’d fought her own party, and taking a few positions which conservatives had nearly killed McCain over (she came out for comprehensive immigration reform). Didn’t matter. She was from Alaska (hah!), she spent her time hunting moose, she’d given birth to a down-syndrome baby, and she dropped her g’s occasionally. How could she be anything BUT a lunatic, backwoods, hick conservative?
Or look at Joe Biden. He said ludicrous things daily, but it didn’t matter. He was from Delaware, a 6-term Senator, and a Democrat. How could he possibly be anything but the epitome of sensitive thoughtfulness? Voters drop candidates, repeatedly, and without fail, into comfortable archetypes they can understand and then proceed to ignore all information which doesn’t compute. The trick, for candidates, is to convince the middle to place you in one archetype, while you convince the base to place you into another.
To base Democrats, Obama was the young, black, professor; an unimpeachably liberal and acceptable figure. To the middle, he was, after nearly two years of struggle, the boring, modest, reasonable sounding moderate. Jindal has a chance to be the “Staunch Catholic” to base Republicans, and the “young, wunderkind, wonk” to the middle. But, he has a better chance of selling that when the second label is at its peak.
December 1st, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Matthew, you’re points on Palin and Biden are well-stated. I just wonder if national politics has irrevocably slipped into irrelevancy.
December 1st, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Speaking of Catholics…I was looking for (and found) a quote of G.K. Chesterton’s, and came across this pithy comment, which pretty much sums up American politics at the moment: “The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.” — Chesterton
December 1st, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Greg,
Maybe. To me, it’s always interesting how candidates can go about overcoming their archetypes. Newt Gingrich ran twice for Congress in Georgia, and both times opponents succeeded in painting him as an intellectual carpet-bagger. The third-time, he learned the Southern-style and became a Georgian. I don’t think voters are hopeless and if you’re real persistent and diligent, you can get out of the hole they’re liable to try to put you in. But, it’s imperative that, from the get-go, you figure out what sort of hole you fit in. If you’re a 26 year old, upper middle-class New Jersey Democrat, who’s moved to Virginia after spending your college years at American University, you need to spend all your time and energy courting rural voters. You need to wear casual clothes, spend some time in traditional Virginian haunts; learn to hunt, etc. And you need to find a way to make this new narrative gel with something true about yourself; it can’t just be a wholesale creation. Maybe you emphasize coming of age during Bill Clinton’s Presidency, and kinda taking his focus on the little guy to heart. Who knows.
The point is, you need to be aware. Sarah Palin, if she wants to ever become President, needs to be aware that voters are likely to attribute any mistakes she mistakes to stupidity, because that’s just how voters think of Alaskan moose hunting women who give birth to down-syndrome kids. To overcome that, she’s going to have to connect a more serious persona to something that’s genuinely true about her. I tend to think that had she come out and emphasized the self-reliance aspects of the frontier persona, she’d of done better for herself if not for McCain. It’s going to be tougher to reverse the perception, at this juncture, but it’s not impossible. Like I said, the American people aren’t hopeless. If you’re consistent and diligent, you can break out of a box.
December 1st, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Greg,
I’m just frustrated when candidates don’t seem to “get it”. I can live with candidates like Romney, who recognize what box they’re likely to get shoved in, and try, but fail, to get out of it. But, I have no patience with a candidate like McCain who seemed eternally content to stay within the narrowest prism in American politics, even though it certainly cost him the Presidency. I guess they see it as following principle, but if you’re not flexible enough to show different voters a different side of yourself, then you’re going to fail majestically in alot of the intricacies of diplomacy/negotiation.
December 1st, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Matthew
“…look at Joe Biden. He said ludicrous things daily, but it didn’t matter. He was from Delaware, a 6-term Senator, and a Democrat. How could he possibly be anything but the epitome of sensitive thoughtfulness?”
You might have a point somewhere around here, having to do with archetypes and all that, but you are not making it well here. First off, Joe does not say ludicrous things daily – he says disarmingly offbeat things semiregularly. They are not ludicrous, they are merely not the normal things politicians say. They often have some validity to them .
And no one, even those who really like him, have ever characterized him as “the epitome of sensitive thoughtfulness”.
Where did you get that from? Oh wait, I know – you deduced it from your assumption. Well, thats the problem….
Joe is a non-sensitive hip-shooter. Thats why we love ‘im.
“To base Democrats, Obama was the young, black, professor; an unimpeachably liberal and acceptable figure.”
No, thats not right. I’m not sure what the base Democrats are that you have in mind, maybe I qualify…No one I know of focuses on Obama as professor as our way of classifying him – and big chunks of the base questioned whether he was a liberal at all. That he is young and black,,,yeah, that has some salience, but mainly it is that he is very intellegent, is comfortable with ideas, is about the exact opposite of the uncurious and anti-intellectual Bush, and so much of the GOP, and is wonderfully eloquent too – those are the main attractants.
“To the middle, he was, after nearly two years of struggle, the boring, modest, reasonable sounding moderate.”
Huh? Who has ever called Obama boring?
And he has always been moderate, to everyone (except republicans committed to opposing him).
“Jindal has a chance to be the “Staunch Catholic” to base Republicans, and the “young, wunderkind, wonk” to the middle. But, he has a better chance of selling that when the second label is at its peak.”
In this day and age you really can’t count on perpetuating two different images to two different demographic groups. We are all connected, instantaneously. You cant really sustain the staunch Catholic thing without ALL of us coming to see him that way. And thats the rub. I think it will be increasingly difficult for extremist candidates to get very far in this country – and Jindal is an extremist.
Its a shame. He does also seem to be very intellegent and capable of pragmatism. He really does seem, in many ways, able to be a Republican answer to Obama, but there is no way that Jindal the socon will sell in non-crimson America.
December 1st, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Don’t forget the ‘14 year rule’:
With only one exception since the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, no one has been elected president who took more than 14 years to climb from his first major elective office to election as either president or vice president.
December 1st, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Tano Says:
December 1st, 2008 at 5:59 pm
“You don’t survive 2 years on a presidential campaign without having every presumption about you examined in full.”
I beg to differ. The 2008 election campaign of Barack Obama – or more precisely, the handling of that campaign by the national media – proves you wrong. We were told that he was brilliant. We were told that he worked with both sides of the aisle. We were told that he is no ideologue. We were told that he was a “new kind of politician,” that he “rises above politics,” and that he was the epitome of ethics and righteousness. None of those vacuous claims, bereft of any real evidence to support them, were ever really vetted in front of the voting public by the national media (or fully challenged by the McCain camp) to any effect in two years of campaigning. Any time anyone attempted to challenge any of those presumptions, someone “not associated with the Obama campaign” would shout them down as racists or as being “McSame.” The issue of race proved to be a powerful insulator in the last election cycle. It will be interesting to see how well the race angle plays again in 2012. But, for now, please don’t tell me that the presumptions about a presidential candidate are automatically challenged, much less examined in full, simply because someone is a candidate for president. If those who the voters trust to do the vetting fail to do the job with which they are entrusted because they almost uniformly support a candidate, then who will examine the presumptions? That is a question that will also be interesting to see in the next election cycle.
December 1st, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Jb,
I find your assertions patently ridiculous. Obama supporters denied any bad things about him, Obama opponents relentlessly repeated all bad things and lots of made up ones too. We heard about the negative stuff constantly – on the news media. Where did you see the Wright tapes repeated hundreds of times? The discussion of Rezko – I read about it first, and in more detail, in newspapers than on blogs.
Your whine seems to be based on the fact that the news media did not totally accept, as gospel truth, all of the anti-Obama talking points put out by Republicans. Well, they didnt accept all the anti McCain stuff either. I think we ended up with a very thorough picture of who both of these guys are.
December 1st, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Tano,
“Huh? Who has ever called Obama boring?”
Me. From the Democratic convention forward, Obama dropped relentlessly into boring mode. Remember all that stuff about “workmanlike” speeches? That was Obama becoming boring, because he’d utterly sold the folks looking for exciting and new (mostly base Democrats), and needed to loop in the folks in the middle who distrusted that kind of high-flying oratory coming from a guy halfway through his first Senate Term. So he dulled it up a bunch, tried to sound reassuring and safe in the debates, and McCain played into the narrative quite nicely in two ways: 1.) He picked Palin, because no other running mate gave him a chance at a boost. But, this deflected the celebrity label from Obama and allowed him to seem more serious in comparison 2.) McCain allowed himself to become annoyed/frustrated/desperate at various points- the debates and his response to the financial crisis come to mind- while Obama just stared on placidly. It was really rather neatly done, but let’s not kid ourselves about Obama’s strategy. In the end, Obama won over the middle because he convinced them he was safe, by convincing them that he was boring.
“In this day and age you really can’t count on perpetuating two different images to two different demographic groups. We are all connected, instantaneously. You cant really sustain the staunch Catholic thing without ALL of us coming to see him that way.”
I’m not so sure. I’ve long had a theory about this. I believe that there are certain circumstances where a candidate has freedom, even in the modern era, to sell himself as two quite different things to two different groups. Let me give you an example. Look back at George Bush in 2000. Better yet, look back to his father in 92′. We tend to forget this, but as of 1992, the Bush’s had long been treated with suspicion by base Republican. H.W. had run substantially to Reagan’s left in 80′ and was challenged seriously from the right in 88′. In 92′, after he broke his no new taxes pledge, the base simply had no use for the Bush’s. But, something peculiar happened, on at least two levels, between 92′ and 00′. First, and this had begun before the 92′ election even ended, H.W. became a more popular figure in all corners- this no doubt had something to do with the improving economy- such that he actually left office in relative popularity. Second, Bill Clinton became a hated figure on the right. Base Republicans, who’d see Bush as a Country Clubber, started to say to themselves “well, he wasn’t so bad after all. At least he had honor” or what have you. So George H.W. started to seem more conservative to base Republicans, while moderates and the like continued to think of him in the same vain: as an essentially moderate, pragmatic politician. Enter George W. Bush. While he received some brief challenges from the right, in general, base Republicans lined up behind Bush. Despite his name, despite the fact that he repeatedly refused to make pledges to the base (his refusal to appoint pro-life judges is notable), despite the fact that he ran on a “compassionate conservatism”. Somehow, this scion of a country club political family which had once been reviled by “true conservatives” was able to wink and nod at the base for most of 99′. And he lost not a step with the middle, who still instinctively viewed the Bush’s as moderate and who found his more welcoming language inviting. This accounts, to a great extent, for his enormous lead over Gore in many early polls. Of course, McCain spoiled it to a certain extent; by gaining traction in NH and running to Bush’s left, he forced Bush back to some of the hard edges he’d been able to avoid with winks and nods. And he lost some ground with the middle. But, for a tantalizing moment, he’d been able to connect to the Republican base-without actually appealing to the Republican base- without the middle being the wiser. He managed this because, after 8 years of Clinton, conservatives were instinctively inclined to trust a Bush.
I’d argue that Obama did something similar; that he appealed to liberals through overwhelming cultural signals- liberals, knowingly or not, were instinctively inclined to trust a young, intellectual, black, professor- and therefore could focus on appealing to the middle through his actual rhetoric and, to a certain extent, his policies. He winked and nodded to liberals, spun the gauzy hope and change stuff for the middle, and the base was too “lukewarm” on Hillary, for her to risk running too far to his right, so he never had to emphasize his liberalism too heavily. McCain didn’t have to worry about offending the base in 2000, because he was a long-shot candidate and it was his clearest route to the nomination and…well, he could figure out where to go if he eventually won it. He was able to draw the contrasts that forced Bush to make his conservatism explicit. Hill was an establishment figure, was thinking about the general election the entire time, and was only willing to go so far with those sort of contrasts.
It’s not clear to me that Jindal has that kind of innate appeal to the right, such that he could wink and nod to them all campaign, while running on an essentially pragmatic, moderately conservative message, but I think it’s a possibility, at the least, especially given the desire on the right for a Republican answer to Obama. That probably won’t be true in 2016, and by then Jindal’s story might not be compelling enough to obscure some of his weaknesses as a politician. But, in 2012, there just might be the right confluence of circumstances for it to sell. Wink and nod staunch Catholic to the right- wunderkind, pragmatic, executive to the middle.