Standing outside of the White House on Monday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal questioned the President Obama’s qualifications as commander in chief while, implicitly, pushing his own.
“The president has really disqualified himself to be our commander in chief,” Jindal said after a National Governors Association meeting there, according to reports. “There are many of us that are very concerned about the president’s unwillingness to call out radical Islamic terrorism and the threat that we face as a country.”
Jindal echoed those remarks later in an interview with the Washington Examiner, and that theme will be at the center of his speech Thursday to the Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington, D.C., an aide confirmed.
The CPAC stage will be one of two this week from which Jindal will try to convince a skeptical audience of his own executive qualifications, both at home and nationally, as he prepares to wage an underdog campaign for president.
On Friday, Jindal will unveil his annual state budget proposal, presenting his prescriptions to meet a $1.6 billion shortfall. Jindal’s ratings have stagnated in Louisiana in part due to these budget woes, with a November survey by the Democratic group Public Policy Polling showing Jindal’s approval at just 33 percent. A survey conducted last month by Jindal’s campaign pollster found a more favorable result, with 46 percent approval.
Still, Jindal spent 165 days in 2014 outside of The Pelican State, according to a tally by Louisiana-based publication The Advocate, preparing to ask for a promotion in the form of a likely bid for president.
That tinder has so far failed to catch fire. In national and primary state polling, Jindal’s support among Republicans has stalled in the low single digits.
Lately, Jindal has honed in on foreign policy and national security to try to break through the 2016 noise, beginning with a trip to London last month. There, Jindal stirred controversy abroad and domestically for remarks about “no-go zones,” where he said European countries allow Muslim law to supercede secular laws.
But Jindal hasn’t walked back the remarks, he’s doubled down.
“There will be some on the Left that will call you racist or anti-Muslim,” Jindal told the Examiner, dismissively. “I think voters are looking for a leader who’s unafraid to say the hard truths, even when you get pushback from the Left or the media.”
Now, Jindal is focusing his attacks on the president, for not characterizing Islamic State fighters as radical Islamists, and for ruling out ground troops as part of the force authorization request sent to Congress.
“This president is taking options off the table, when he should be leaving all options on the table,” Jindal said in an interview Monday with the Examiner, at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., in a preview of his remarks to CPAC later this week.
Last week, Jindal refused in a statement to condemn former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani from taking criticism of the president a few steps further. “I know this is a horrible thing to say,” Giuliani said, “but I do not believe that the president loves America.”
“Of course he loves America,” Jindal said Monday of the president. But, Jindal added later of the president’s foreign policy approach, “He may be the first American president that doesn’t embrace American exceptionalism.”
Remarks such as those have garnered Jindal plenty of headlines nationally. One of the nagging problems Jindal faces as he tries to introduce himself to Republican voters nationwide, however, is that his popularity is faltering at home.
Jindal reasons that his approval ratings reflect some of the controversial policies he has pushed as governor, including school vouchers and teacher tenure reform, opposed by teachers unions, and the privatization of public hospitals.
“There are lots of politicians who like to be celebrities,” Jindal said. “It’s easy to be popular if you just do nothing but kiss babies and cut ribbons. I got elected to make the big, transformational changes in my state.”
“You make big changes, you’re going to upset the status quo and you’re going to do things that will make some people unhappy,” Jindal added, “but I think our country is hungry for leaders who are willing to make the big changes, to say, we’re not just being governed by polls, we’re not just doing the easy or the popular thing.”
But the state’s budget woes have also kept Jindal on the defensive. He has refused to raise taxes as Louisiana’s revenues have fallen short of spending, and even some Republicans in Baton Rouge have criticized Jindal for offering only short-term solutions to the state’s fiscal challenges.
On Friday, Jindal said, he will present a budget that addresses the state’s shortfall without raising taxes, although he did not go into further detail.
Meeting his deficit of support relative to other likely Republican candidates for president, meanwhile, will present another challenge entirely.
When asked where he thinks he fits in among the emerging GOP field, Jindal expressed confidence that he will find his niche.
“I never worry about what other candidates are doing or what they’re thinking, and I think the good news is, we’ve got a deep bench this year,” Jindal said. “Republican voters hopefully get to vote for something, not just against somebody.”
As he has worked to define his national brand, Jindal has zigged where other potential candidates have zagged. Last month, as a herd of Republican contenders converged on Iowa to speak at the Freedom Summit, Jindal was in Louisiana, headlining a prayer rally.
But Jindal’s platform will also have much in common with other contenders, particularly the other former and current governors running for president. Like Govs. Scott Walker and Chris Christie, Jindal is optimistic that Republican voters will value his state-level executive experience — even with his underwater approval ratings, and although other governors’ records are better known nationally.
“I’m biased toward governors, people who’ve run something,” Jindal said. “We’ve had a president who needed all the job training for these last six years, I don’t think we can afford that again.”
