Scout e-mailed this over either last thing last night or first thing this morning (What day is it? All day yesterday I thought it was Wednesday, and now I’m confused.) and I have to say, it’s almost charmingly divorced from reality:
about his traditional social views or compelling personal story.
Instead, he uncorked a fluent, substantive rush of policy proposals and
achievements, covering workforce development, biodiesel refineries,
quality assurance centers, digital media, Medicare parts C and D, and
state waivers to the CMS (whatever that is).
It’s theCenters for Medicare and Medicaid Services, you asshole. I get what he’s doing here, that it’s somehow cute and funny not to get it, and it would be if Gerson was Elle Woods and not, you know, a columnist for the Washington Post.
Hee hee! I’m just a girl! I don’t understand big words! Teach me, Mr. Jindal!
president: Bill Clinton. Like Clinton (a fellow Rhodes scholar), Jindal
has the ability to overwhelm any topic with facts and thoughtful
arguments — displaying a mastery of detail that encourages confidence.
Both speak of complex policy issues with the world-changing intensity
of a late-night dorm room discussion.
That’s what we need. More overcaffeinated dorm room discussions! Because college students can all save the world, especially if they go out and become Republicans!
ideological balance. He is highly critical of the economic theory of
the stimulus package andturned down
$98 million in temporary unemployment assistance to his state —
benefits that would have mandated increased business taxes in
Louisiana. But unlike some Republican governors who engaged in broad
anti-government grandstanding, Jindal accepted transportation funding
and other resources from the stimulus — displaying a
program-by-program discrimination that will serve him well in public
office. Jindal manages to hold to principle while seeing the angles.
Ah, bipartisanship. The unbearable rightness of half-assing everything so as not to make a commitment.
him the anti-Palin. Fairly or unfairly, media and intellectual elites
(including some conservative elites) regard Gov. Sarah Palin as an
inhabitant of another cultural planet. Jindal, while also religious and
conservative, speaks the language of the knowledge class and will not
be easily caricatured or dismissed. Tojournalists, policy experts and
Rhodes scholars, Jindal is also “one of us.”
Emphasis mine. Who are they? Who? Seriously, this whole “one of us, one of us” mantra makes zero sense. Being able to get along with vapid preppy assholes whose only concern is that Chris Matthews piss on them as he walks by is not a skill that automatically translates to running government well.
All during the campaign “journalists” — by which Gerson really means starfucking columnists — whined and complained that Obama wasn’t nice enough to them, that he ordered drinks in a diner wrong, that he didn’t bowl well enough, and we elected his orange-juice-drinking, low-average-having ass anyway and in the first 35 days he’s been on the job he seems to not be fucking it up too badly. So I’d like to know eactly how much weight Bobby Jindal’s supposed ingratiation with Gerson is going to carry with voters who, last I checked, were still the ones who made the real decisions about who they trusted and didn’t.
Much to Michael Gerson’s disappointment, I’m sure.
A.