Bobby Jindal - a heartbeat away?

No one outside the McCain brain really knows, of course, and those who might have some inside information aren't talking about the person John McCain is most likely to pick as his vice presidential running mate. Several names have popped up in the press as possibilities, however, including Charlie Crist, Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, and Bobby Jindal.

The vice presidency has gained status in recent years and it is a position that we should consider with great deliberation for one never knows what the future holds. Many people, myself included, believe Bush to be a horrendous president, but we also believe Dick Cheney would be worse. In fact, some folks are convinced that Dick Cheney has been one of the most important driving forces in the Bush administration; that Bush has, at times, been a mere figurehead, with the real power centered in Cheney.

While the role of the vice president is largely determined by the president, the fact is that the the vice president is only a heartbeat away from the Oval Office. On several occasions in our history, the president's death has led to the vice president moving up.

John McCain will be 72 years of age if elected. That is not really "old" by today's standards (some wags claim 70 is the "new 50), but it is still old enough that some of the body's inner workings are slowing down and wearing out. All of which means nothing other than that John McCain's age should also be factored into the presidential equation, if for no other reason that he won't get any younger and if elected wouldn't leave office until he was 76, unless he should seek another term and win, which would mean he could be president until he was 80.


One man's name has been cropping up with increasing frequency on McCain's "short list" for the vice presidential spot: Bobby Jindal.

Bobby Jindal is the Republican governor of Louisiana. Bobby Jindal is the right wing's wet dream. Rush Limbaugh has praised him, calling Jindal "the next Ronald Reagan." Bobby Jindal is the proverbial disaster waiting in the wings. We could, as a nation, hardly do worse than Bobby Jindal as vice president.

Admittedly, Jindal has an impressive resume. His real first name is Piyush and he was born 1971 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana to Punjabi immigrants who followed the Hindu religion. When a teenager, he converted to Roman Catholicism.

Jindal did well in school graduating magnu cum laude from Brown University with degrees in biology and public policy at age 20! Yale and Harvard both pursued him, but he accepted a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford where he earned a master's degree in political science.

Jindal exemplifies the fact that a world-class education does not necessarily translate into intellectual rigor or intellectual integrity.


For two years, Jindal worked at McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm which he left in 1996 to accept the job of secretary of Louisiana's Department of Health and Hospitals. He did what he was supposed to do, wiping out a huge deficit by "cutting per-beneficiary Medicaid spending and reducing the work force by 1000 employees." That should be a clue as to Jindal's attitude toward the least among us.

In 1998, Jindal was appointed as executive director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicine, which he left in1999 to become president of the University of Louisiana system. Two years later, Bush appointed him as assistant secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the DHS.

In 2003, Jindal ran for governor, but lost to Kathleen Blanco, the Democratic governor we watched blunder her way through the Katrina disaster. Jindal then ran for and won the congressional seat which had been held by David Vitter, (the escort services' best friend) who was elected a senator in 2004.

Jindal used Hurricane Katrina and the inept bureaucratic workings in Louisiana as a trigger to jump start another campaign for governor. He portrayed himself as the answer to the corruption that plagued the state of Louisiana, and like so many phonies pretended to aspire to bipartisanship.


We have recently reported on Jindal's praise of the Louisiana courts for allowing convicted rapists to be castrated. That's the good news. Jindal, according to The American Prospect, "strongly and openly opposes abortion (without exception, even in cases of rape and incest), supports teaching intelligent design in public schools, has proposed bans on both stem-cell research and flag-burning, and voted to a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman." We should also note that Jindal is homophobic and much opposed to gay rights.He promotes faith-based initiatives with no restrictions and favors prayer in the public schools.

Jindal wears his Roman Catholicism on his sleeve. He believes it is his Christian duty to promote ultra-right Christian positions as public policy. Michael Gerson, in a Washington Post article, reported that in a telephone interview Jindal said, "I'm proud of my faith. I believe in God, that Jesus died and rose. I can't divide my public and private conscience. I can't stop being a Christian, and wouldn't want to for a moment of the day."

Frank Cocozzelli, in an article at talk2action says that in the 1990s, Jindal published an article which argued, "The same Catholic Church which infallibly determined the canon of the Bible must be trusted to interpret her handiwork; the alternative is to trust individual Christians, burdened with, as Calvin termed it, their 'utterly depraved' minds, to overcome their tendency to rationalize, their selfish desires, and other effects of original sin."

Jindal wrote elsewhere, "The choice is between Catholicism's authoritative Magisterium and subjective interpretation which leads to anarchy and heresy."

Whew. This is what Gerson calls a "muscular Roman Catholicism." It's why I would call a medieval Christianity.


Many politicians are men and women of faith and their faith is fundamental to their values and their values impact their political beliefs and decisions. They stop short, however, of trying to translate those values into law, or impose those values upon the rest of the population. Thus a politician's values may lead her to oppose abortion, but she does not want to enact a law that would forbid all women the right to choose.

Jindal is not that kind of politician. The so-called "muscular Roman Catholicism" of which Gerson speaks operates from the point of view that Catholic values should be reflected by specific laws that relate to those values. Thus, Jindal will oppose abortion for any and all reasons. He will oppose gay rights because his church, in its majesty, has decided that gays are incomplete human beings (even though a goodly percentage of its leaders fall into that category!).

Jindals "muscular Roman Catholicism" even trumps his training in biology. He has bought into the creationist crap promoted by the Discovery Institute and is a supporter of creationist revisionism and/or the teaching of intelligent design in public schools! In justifying his position, he relies on talking points provided by the Discovery Institute and its minions. "The reality is there are a lot of things we don't understand...I think we owe it to our children to teach them the best possible modern scientific facts and theories..." blah, blah, blah. It's all right out of the Discovery Institute's handbook.


David Barton is a Christian nationalist, very influential in homeschooling circles and the far Christian right. Chris Rodda at talk2action says he "has long been pegged as a fraud and an historical revisionist by legitimate scholars, but this hasn't halted the spread of his lies."

Barton spreads his mythical version of American history via a variety of "discredited materials" used by homeschoolers, Christian high schools and colleges and in a number of public schools "via the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools course," which is best described as a collection of lies wrapped in the American and Christian flags. Even worse is that various members of Congress have used Barton's non-history to promote resolutions such as the one by Randy Forbes that called for an American religious history week.

In 2006, one candidate for public office helped by Barton was Bobby Jindal. Jindal, running for governor at the time, appeared on Barton's "WallBuildersLIVE!" radio show.

The weekend before the interview, Jindal (who had made several church campaign appearances with Barton) said:

"Let me tell you, Dave did a fantastic job -- went to three churches with us, just reminding us of our nation's history, our nation's heritage. You know, I listen to him. I learn something new on every Capital tour, at every presentation. The response was tremendous -- people just telling me that every single stop, every single church -- they said they learned so much."

Mr. Rodda describes the kinds of things Jindal "learned." He says Barton's American history is "pure, unadulterated BULLSHIT!"

You can read all of Mr. Rodda's article here.


The fact that Jindal is so easily taken in by a conman like David Barton is just plain scary. He seems cowed by religious authority. He seems to need religious authority. He doesn't ever question religious authority. His Catholic church is "right" by virtue of its being the Roman Catholic Church, the repository of God's teaching and the expression of God on earth.

But Jindal does not stop there. His faith is "muscular," which, again, means he sees that part of his political duty is to ensure that his faith is reflected in the laws of the land.

God makes him do it.

Do we really want another of these clowns near the Oval Office, a heartbeat away?