Rod Dreher: Bobby Jindal in the eye of the storm
08:51 AM CDT on Sunday, September 14, 2008
Like hundreds of thousands of people, my folks down in south Louisiana spent more than a week without electricity after Hurricane Gustav barreled through.
When New Orleans escaped without much damage, the national media blew out of town. Largely off camera, just short of a million people in Baton Rouge and central Louisiana suffered in the sweltering heat, unable to participate in the modern world.
You think I exaggerate? When my folks just north of Baton Rouge were able to get through on the phone – this was rare – they told me that if you didn't have cash on hand before the storm, you were in trouble. The banks couldn't open, and merchants without electricity could not do business electronically. For more than a week, vast numbers of Louisianians lived in conditions more like 1908 than 2008.
"In all my 74 years, I've never seen anything this bad around here," my father said wearily. "But I tell you what, that Bobby Jindal, he's on top of everything. It's not like Blanco time."
He referred, of course, to the hapless response with which the state's previous governor, Kathleen Blanco, met Katrina. Ms. Blanco was so badly damaged by her poor leadership in the aftermath of the 2005 hellstorm that she didn't even bother to run for re-election. Mr. Jindal, a reform Republican congressman, won handily last year.
The intellectually brilliant, high-achieving conservative was much talked about as a potential running mate for John McCain, but speculation waned as his youth (he's 37) and inexperience (in the governor's office for less than one year) made him a less than ideal choice. It's just as well: Mr. Jindal spent the GOP convention on the hurricane frontlines in Louisiana. This storm tested him like nothing else imaginable.
He's done spectacularly well. As Gustav snarled offshore, the state moved quickly to implement evacuation plans. When an electronic malfunction slowed evacuee processing, the governor put common sense over bureaucratic nonsense, telling local officials to get the people out and do the paperwork later.
In the hurricane's immediate wake, the governor gave lengthy public briefings filled with detailed, useful information, forcefully presented. He was energetically in command, inspiring confidence in much the same way New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani did in the hours and days following the Sept. 11 attacks.
In a state where people are accustomed to slow, stupid governance, Mr. Jindal was aggressively competent. Dealing with one of the most complex disasters in the state's history, he moved swiftly to get help. The Advocate, Baton Rouge's newspaper, reported that the governor was intensely engaged in solving problems. When the hurricane was pounding the capital, word reached Mr. Jindal that medical patients housed at an LSU arena were having generator difficulties. The governor jumped into his car and handled the crisis personally.
A week after the storm, many parts of the state still had no power. My father reported that everyone in the neighborhood was tired and ready for it to be over but could hardly believe how much the government was doing to put things right. Mr. Jindal had arranged for National Guard troops from other states to come help clear fallen trees and repair power lines.
The folks where my parents live aren't the only ones happy with their governor. In New Orleans, The Times-Picayune raved about Mr. Jindal's performance; even Democratic Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu gave him "an A-plus."
This is not the first time Mr. Jindal has taken on an overwhelming challenge and emerged as victor. At age 24, the Ivy-educated whiz kid took over Louisiana's ailing Department of Health and Hospitals and wiped out its $475 million deficit. And now, in a dramatic crucible, the state's chief executive is demonstrating executive skills – including planning, decision-making and communication – to justify the confidence the state's voters placed in him.
Americans haven't seen much of Louisiana's continuing suffering from Gustav on the news, perhaps because downed trees don't make for dramatic pictures. Besides, there are no political scalps to be taken this time around. Rest assured that the state is far from a full recovery.
But off the national media radar, Bobby Jindal is still beavering away, showing his people that government can be trusted, not simply endured. That government can work, and work for them.
A guy like that could go places.
Rod Dreher is a Dallas Morning News editorial columnist. His e-mail address is rdreher@dallasnews.com.
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