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United States News Title: Bobby Jindal's second act Bobby Jindal's second act By GLENN THRUSH | 5/26/10 5:02 AM EDT Jindal has flung himself into the crisis, enduring dawn-to-dusk briefings on the fine points of the spill and hopping on helicopters, boats and sport utility vehicles to inspect the parishes in the path of the crude. AP Digg/Buzz It UpDigg this Story!Buzz it up!Add to LinkedIn.POLITICO 44Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal — who last occupied the national stage to bemoan the evils of Big Government — has seized the spotlight again, this time to demand a Big Government response to the Gulf oil spill. The baby-faced 38-year-old has emerged as the most visible critic of an Obama-BP shotgun marriage that has thus far failed to cap the Deepwater Horizon well, accusing the president’s team of a sluggish, uncoordinated response to the disaster. In the process, he has managed to tick off the White House, annoy some Republicans who think he’s coming down too hard on Big Oil — and regain a bit of the political capital lost after delivering a widely panned GOP rebuttal to President Barack Obama’s first joint session speech to Congress in February 2009. “He didn’t give the best speech of his life but, hey, his political career is still on the rise,” said Roger Villere, a close ally of Jindal’s who chairs the state GOP. “He’s got real leadership capabilities,” said Villere, who is campaigning for lieutenant governor with Jindal’s support. “He’s got a brain that’s unparalleled in Louisiana.” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters Jindal shouldn’t be “wringing his hands” over the federal response in Louisiana. “Frankly, there are an awful lot of people who said this could never happen who are now saying, wringing their hands and saying, ‘Oh, why aren’t you doing something?’” Hoyer told reporters in his Capitol office Tuesday. “Well, the fact is that for too long, frankly, we weren’t as vigorous in oversight in terms of what safety measures were being taken, installed and maintained by these oil companies.” Jindal’s ambitions have always extended beyond the bayou: He wasn’t shy about blasting Obama’s stimulus package as “irresponsible” — while accepting much of the money. He also positioned himself as a responsible Republican voice on health care — dismissing the House plan as “radical,” but urging Republicans not to abandon the process. But if it’s tempting to accuse Jindal of leveraging the Gulf crisis to revive his national political aspirations, his main concerns appear to be much closer to home. Jindal, elected to restore confidence in a state government that failed its citizens during Hurricane Katrina, is haunted by fears he’ll be compared with his predecessor, Gov. Kathleen Blanco, allies say. With Katrina very much in mind, Jindal, the first Indian-American governor in U.S. history, has flung himself into the crisis, enduring dawn-to-dusk briefings on the fine points of the spill and hopping on helicopters, boats and sport utility vehicles to inspect the parishes in the path of the crude. To avoid the perception that he’s cashing in on the disaster, Jindal has postponed publication of his upcoming campaign-style book, “Real Hope, Real Change: New Conservative Solutions to Rescue America,” to focus “150 percent” on the spill, according to his publisher. His staff says he’s been deeply frustrated in his nearly daily huddles with federal officials — who promise him “granularity” in answering his questions, only to come back with vague, inconclusive answers. “The governor has said [in] private exactly what he has said publicly, that the response to date is incomplete, and while BP is the responsible party, the federal government needs to ensure that they are indeed held accountable and responsible,” said Jindal’s spokesman, Kyle Plotkin, who expects his boss to take his case directly to Obama when the president arrives Friday for his second visit to the spill-ravaged Gulf. Jindal’s Louisiana critics, including state Rep. Sam Jones, think his sudden interest in obtaining government help to clean up the spill is hypocritical after his railing against the stimulus. But Plotkin fires back: “We do believe in limited government, but the federal government does have a few core responsibilities.” Jindal – who talks in Gatling Gun bursts so fast reporters have to replay his press conferences in “slow” mode – has grown increasingly vocal in criticizing the Army Corps of Engineers, for instance. He faults the agency for not quickly approving his untested plan to place dozens of offshore sand barriers to block the oil before it drifts ashore. Corps officials say they are studying the plan, but the oil spill’s national incident commander Thad Allen says that plan could take months to implement and might waste time and money better expended on other projects. For their part, White House officials are puzzled by Jindal’s increasing criticism of their efforts. The governor and his staff have been in nearly constant contact with Obama’s team since the first days of the spill, and those interactions have been cordial and businesslike, with little of the sharp rhetoric of his most recent public statements, administration officials maintain “Everything he’s asked for, he’s gotten, except for the sand idea, which has some real possible problems,” said one official familiar with the situation. On Monday, Jindal met with administration officials, emerging to tell reporters he was frustrated with federal efforts to place containment booms around endangered coastal wetlands before the brown tide of oil seeps into fragile marshland. Jindal said the administration had deployed 815,569 feet of hard containment boom, but claimed the Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security have yet to act on a request for 5 million additional feet of hard boom that he made on May 2, less than two weeks after the spill started. “It is clear that the resources needed to protect our coast are not here,” he said. “Boom, skimmers, vacuums and jack-up barges are all in short supply. Every day oil sits and waits for clean up, more of our marsh dies.” Allen, who is coordinating the federal response, told reporters Monday that he will consider the request once the demands of a multistate “contingency plan” for the spill are met. Democratic critics aren’t the only ones put off by Jindal. Some Republicans favor the more laidback approach of Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former Republican National Committee chairman, who has stood up for the oil industry and suggested that liberal environmentalists are exploiting the catastrophe to curtail deep sea drilling. “Haley has actually taken the smarter approach, from a national perspective,” said a GOP operative close to both politicians. “Haley doesn’t have oil on his beaches. ... But he has taken the long view, that this shouldn’t kill an important source of energy. Bobby has been a little frantic, running around, much more concerned about how he’ll look on tonight’s TV news.” Jindal has also come under fire from Louisiana Democrats for moving the state’s Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office, formerly a free-standing executive agency reporting directly to the governor, to the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections. Still, even critics acknowledge that the former Rhodes scholar is intelligent, energetic and on top of the crisis. And for all his running around, Jindal’s political fate — like Obama’s — will be decided by uncontrollable events 5,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf. “This is in his DNA, this is what he was elected to do,” said Nick Ayers, executive director of the Republican Governors Association. “It may be a little too much to say he’s a product of Katrina, but dealing with this kind of disaster is definitely why he believes he was put in office.” Ben Smith contributed to this report.
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#1. To: Badeye (#0)
Given Jindal's track record of being a liar - that he established during Katrina - why should anyone listen to him...?
#67. To: war (#48) Keep hiding behind the bozo, bozo. (laughing) You've always been a world class pussy. Badeye posted on 2010-01-14 16:12:48 ET Reply Trace
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