Gov. Bobby Jindal, R-La., always seems to draw the short straw when it comes to speaking assignments. In 2009, he gave a much-criticized response to President Obama’s first speech to a joint session of Congress – a thankless task when Obama was still at the peak of his popularity.
Today, he made the 9 a.m. speech on Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Given that many attendees are out late on Friday night and already weary of speeches, he had to address a relatively smaller and more subdued crowd than we’ve seen in the past several days. All that said, he gave a pretty solid speech.
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Now having five years under his belt, Jindal has racked up an impressive list of accomplishments in Lousiana. He touted his ethics reforms and tax and spending cuts and spoke about his second term agenda on public sector union pension and education reforms.
There’s still room for improvement in his speaking style. At times, he spoke too quickly – and in one section of his speech, he rattled off a long string of surveys in which Lousiana has moved from among the worst of all states in rankings to among the best. They all began merge together.
Yet he did also weave some effective anecdotes into is his speech. He spoke a lot about lessons he learned from his Indian immigrant parents about the aspirational quality of America. And he told a great anecdote about the Obama administration’s handling of the BP oil spill to show the disconnect between the emphasis they place on book smarts over real world know how. As the oil continued to flow toward the Louisiana coast, a local fisherman suggested they try to vacuum the oil. So he called up the White House, and passed along the idea, but they dismissed it, saying there was no way to get vacuum trucks in the water. So he ordered the Louisiana National Guard to put vacuums on boats, and eventually they had a small fleet sucking up oil. But then he got a call from the White House that they wanted to stop the process for inspections. Eventually, the administration caved, but squandered time in the process.
Jindal is a very rare type of politician. Somebody who is both brilliant and wonky, but also practical, all of which has made him an effective public executive.
