Get Ready To Rumble In 2012!

Is it too early to start talking about the 2012 presidential election? Not for political junkies like me! Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana, got his “campaign” off to a rousing start last night by delivering the Republican response to President Barack Obama's address to Congress and the nation.

I thought President Obama's speech was a forceful, confident narrative, summing up all he's trying to do to get our broken economy back on track. It was short on details, but the point last night wasn't to lay out a laundry list of bullet points, but to reassure the American people that he knows what he's doing, that he understands people's concerns, and that we need to be patient while all the pieces are put into place and given time to work.

He also made it a point to note that health insurance reform remains on the table, assuring everyone he has no intention of placing that critical component of his campaign on the back burner for long.

In fact, he explained that the soaring cost of health care and our failure to get it under control–while leaving tens of millions underinsured or without any coverage at all–is a big part of the economic predicament we're in today. Look at how health insurance costs–both for current and retired workers–have helped cripple the auto industry!

Let there be no doubt: health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year, President Obama declared.

But I was more interested in the response from Gov. Jindal, who established himself as the early favorite to challenge President Obama in 2012.

He started by hailing Obama as the first African-American President–a keen point given the governor's own Indian family's immigrant background.

But then he drew an out-loud guffaw from yours truly when he said with a straight face that “today in Washington, some are promising that government will rescue us from the economic storms raging all around us. Those of us who lived through Hurricane Katrina, we have our doubts.”

What he conveniently neglected to mention, of course, was that the federal government's shameful failure to live up to our national rescue and recovery responsibilities after Katrina came under a Republican administration committed to the misguided belief that government is always the problem and can never be the solution. It's no wonder good, old “Brownie” failed as head of FEMA, given the party's can't-do attitude. Yet that is the same philosophy Gov. Jindal endorses heartily.

He also made a joke about how, since his mom was four months pregnant when his family arrived in America, “I was what folks in the insurance industry now call a pre-existing condition.”

That's cute, except the joke is on us. In reality, pre-existing conditions are what keep coverage unaffordable–if it's available at all–for those who would like to buy individual health insurance. Yet most Republicans want to end what's left of the employer-based group health market and leave people on their own to buy coverage. Good luck with that!

Still, Gov. Jindal is articulate, bright, young and charismatic, as well as a reflection of the increasing diversity in American society. He would make a formidable opponent.

However, I suspect that in two years or so, Gov. Jindal will take the temperature of the body politic before deciding whether to run. If the economy has turned around by then, I would bet he'll hold off until the presidency is wide open in 2016, rather than take on a popular President who saved the nation. Let Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin be the sacrificial lamb, he'll say to himself!

But if President Obama is trapped in a long-term economic decline like Japan's lost decade, or if Afghanistan becomes a quagmire like Iraq, or if there is another major terrorist attack or foreign policy debacle, look out! Gov. Jindal might try to take back the White House and restore the GOP's vision of smaller government.

What do you folks think?