“Bubba Bobby Jindal waves the War Flag”

That’s the headline for Kathleen Parker’s opinion piece today (in the Trib, but syndicated from the Washington Post) on Jindal, describing the dust-up over his comments at the National Governor’s Association.  The comments themselves aren’t very interesting, but here’s what she has to say about Jindal more generally:

Whatever you call him, anyone who has met Jindal quickly realizes that he considers himself a good ol’ boy, born and bred. Bubba Bobby. An admitted policy nerd who probably would rather revamp health care reform — overnight with no coffee — than attend a gator-wrestling match, he’s apparently ready to start flexing his muscles. 

Though new to the broader public, this is a familiar Jindal to Louisianans during the Katrina era. While then-Gov. Kathleen Blanco was clearly overwhelmed by events, Jindal became the Incredible Hulk. Then a congressman in Washington, you might say he was bustin’ his britches to save the day, or at least as many fellow citizens as possible. He flew to Louisiana, presumably by his own powers, rolled up his sleeves and procured caravans of trucks for relief efforts.

Now, I’m a big fan of Jindal, though I cringed as much as anyone at his disastrous 2009 State of the Union response (one of these days, I should look for a speech on YouTube to see what his uncoached speaking style is).  He’s a nerd, a precocious public-policy geek who had a longer list of accomplishments at a younger age than anyone else — and by “accomplishments” I don’t just mean offices that he had won election to.

So far a I can tell (and this comes partly from reading his book a couple years ago; I should dig that out again if I didn’t donate it to clear space on the bookshelves at some point), his biggest limitation is that he gets a bit too attached to one-size-fits-all solutions in areas outside his expertise.  He was promoting massively punitive treatment of sex offenders, if I remember right, in his book — despite the fact that these programs have devastated the lives of even statutory rape offenders, and left men homeless as they can’t find a place to live.  And a while back there was a tax proposal that he had to drop, though I don’t remember the details.

But just imagine if he, rather that Obama and Sebelius, were in charge of the ObamaCare exchanges — and in charge of designing the law itself.  Hmmm . . . makes me wonder if he’s said anything publicly about that. . .