Gov. Bobby Jindal Is Not Just The GOP Version of Obama

CORDEL FAULK TIMES-DISPATCH GUEST COLUMNIST
Published: December 28, 2008

Is Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal the Republican Barack Obama?

A political podcast I downloaded asked that question recently, but it wasn't the first time I have heard it. It likely won't be the last, either.

We can answer the query unequivocally, here and now: No, he's not -- and he doesn't have to be. There are similarities between Obama and Jindal, but Republicans must realize that the 36-year-old Southern governor isn't a miracle GOP answer to the president-elect.

It is easy to see why some people want to cast the Pelican State governor as a conservative counter to Obama -- and it's not only the two men's shared skin tone. Both are reform-minded political and policy whiz kids who cut to the front of the political line, displacing notorious political machines in Chicago and Louisiana, and quickly zoomed to national prominence. Both also show the best of America: Obama, the highly educated son of an African immigrant, won a seat in the U.S. Senate and the presidency with so-called post-racial coalitions; uber-educated Jindal, whose parents emigrated from India in the 1970s, claimed the governor's chair in a region once wary of those who could be branded "outsiders."

The comparisons present a nice package, neatly tied, for Republicans who want to believe they have an Obama of their own ready to reclaim the mantle from the charismatic Democratic president-elect. Before Jindal said that he will not run for president in 2012, some members of the media also liked the Obama-Jindal narrative because they might have had the chance to bill that year's campaign as a clash-of-the-titans election.

Why don't we all agree to resist the urge to be that superficial? OK?

Obama's story -- told in two best sellers -- is almost universally known these days, so the Cliff Notes' version will suffice for this discussion: Graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he served as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama eschewed high-dollar, private-sector salaries to return to Chicago as a community organizer. He was elected to the Illinois State Senate at a young age before running and winning a seat in the U.S. Senate and the presidency in rapid succession.

Let's compare Jindal's story: After graduating from Brown University in the early 1990s, Jindal turned down admission to both Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School, instead heading to Oxford University in England as a Rhodes Scholar. Upon returning stateside, Jindal did not find himself at one of the ivy-covered graduate schools where most former Rhodes recipients tend to congregate. Instead, he wound up as the 25-year-old head of Louisiana's Department of Health and Hospitals after impressing the state's Republican governor, Mike Foster. While his peers were dealing with the normal quarter-life crisis ("What do I do now that I'm an adult?"), Jindal busied himself with turning his department's $400 million deficit into a $200 million surplus.

A series of appointments to difficult jobs followed: executive director of a national commission on the reform of Medicare, president of the University of Louisiana system, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He then ran for governor of Louisiana, lost narrowly, won a seat in Congress the next year, and in 2007 was elected governor after Katrina painfully demonstrated to voters why they should have elected him the first time.

Are there similarities between Obama and Jindal? Sure, but so what? And honestly, they aren't stunning. People want to hold the talented brown-skinned Republican up as the foil to the talented brown-skinned Democrat, yet that cheapens the discussion about the merits of both men.

For Jindal's career to be judged a success, he doesn't have to a become the conservative mirror-image of Obama. Instead, his job during these next few years is to be the honest, tough, and smart reformer Louisianans have long needed in the governor's chair. If he does his current job well -- and all indications are that he is doing so with exceptional skill -- then he will be able to stroll onto the national stage.

If he doesn't handle the office of Louisiana governor well, then certainly the Oval Office isn't something he has any business aspiring to occupy.

It's also worth noting a lesson Sarah Palin taught the nation: Don't step onto the national stage too early. Jindal has been governor for one year. Let's wait before handing him a nomination to federal executive office. Americans seem to like choosing governors to serve as president, because they have training in leading large public corporations. There's nothing wrong with accepting that training before deciding if the grind of the presidential campaign -- not to mention the presidency -- is worth all the stress that accompanies it.

When Jindal recently said he will not run for president in 2012, he emphasized that he's rather concentrate on the task ahead of him in Louisiana. That's a smart move. Let's hope it ends the talk of "Jindal: the Republican Obama" before the media spend years building it up -- because the two will never likely run against each other. It leaves Jindal an opportunity to run for president in what's likely to be a more promising year -- 2016 -- when possibly no incumbent president or vice president will be on the ballot. And, it also saves the public from an election dominated by talk of the ethnicities of the two major-party contenders, as opposed to their policy positions and visions for country's future.

When I was in high school I asked a friend of mine on the track team why he was so successful. He attributed it to the fact that he never spent a second thinking about the competition. This friend used all his time to prepare himself for a race -- never obsessing over whether others were preparing better or had the physical talent to beat him. He didn't care how opponents prepared or what physical gifts God blessed them with the day they were born. He called it "running my own race."

He'd say, "I prepare to run my race the best I can, and they never seem to beat me. Even if I did spend time thinking about what my opponents were doing, it wouldn't help, so I don't."

So Gov. Jindal, run your own race. You don't have to be Barack Obama just because you are smart and brown.
Cordel Faulk is communications director at UVa's Center for Politics. Contact him at .