Jindal hammers Obama in new book
By: Jonathan Martin
November 12, 2010 12:15 AM EST
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NEW ORLEANS — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal uses a new book to portray President Barack Obama as disconnected from the Gulf oil spill, charging that he was more focused on the political aftermath than the actual impact of the crisis.
Jindal recounts a pair of private conversations with the president that paint him as consumed with how his actions were being perceived.
On Obama’s first trip to Louisiana after the disaster, the governor describes how the president took him aside on the tarmac after arriving to complain about a letter that Jindal had sent to the administration requesting authorization for food stamps for those who had lost their jobs because of the spill.
As Jindal describes it, the letter was entirely routine, yet Obama was angry and concerned about looking bad.
"Careful," he quotes the president as warning him, "this is going to get bad for everyone."
Nearby on the tarmac, Jindal recalls, then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel was chewing out his own chief of staff, Timmy Teepell.
“If you have a problem pick up the f——n’ phone,” Jindal quotes Emanuel telling Teepell.
The governor asserts that the White House had tipped off reporters to watch the exchange on the New Orleans tarmac that Sunday in May and deemed it a “press stunt” that symbolized what’s wrong with Washington.
“Political posturing becomes more important than reality,” he writes.
And after Obama instituted a moratorium on offshore drilling, Jindal recounts that the president dismissed his concerns about the economic impact of the ban.
“I understand you need to say all of this, I know you need to say this, that you are facing political pressure,” Jindal quotes Obama telling him. When the governor said he was concerned about people losing their jobs, he said the president cited national polls showing that people supported the ban.
“The human element seemed invisible to the White House,” he writes. Asked to respond to Jindal's assertions, Obama aides didn’t directly address either conversation but pointed to the president’s overall response to the spill.
“From Day One, President Obama has directed his administration to work with state and local governments to respond to and help Gulf communities recover from the BP oil spill,” said White House spokesman Adam Abrams. “The administration’s response was the largest response to an environmental disaster in our nation’s history and included not just nutrition assistance but also over 40,000 workers, ongoing efforts in science and seafood safety, the Mabus report for long-term Gulf recovery and the creation of the BP $20 billion fund for Gulf families and businesses.”
Jindal has criticized the administration in the past over the spill, but that he would do so at the outset of his book suggests he wants to raise his national profile — and perhaps seek national office.
In an interview with POLITICO prior to the book’s release, the governor argued that Obama’s response to the disaster was a metaphor for what he described as the administration’s more fundamental problem.
“They’re not connected to reality on the ground,” he said. The book, titled “Leadership and Crisis,” amounts to a national introduction for the 39-year-old first-term governor. While a familiar figure to political insiders — largely for his Indian-American heritage, sterling résumé and a regrettable State of the Union response last year — Jindal is largely undefined with the broader voting public.
After losing his first bid for the governorship in 2003 and then serving two terms in Congress, Jindal has enjoyed wide popularity since winning the governor's mansion in his native Baton Rouge in 2007.
He’s passed tax cuts and historic ethics reforms in the notoriously corrupt state and won accolades for his administration's responses to hurricanes and the oil spill.
But he faces a looming $1.5 billion budget deficit, and his proposed cuts to higher education this week brought hundreds of protesters to the state Capitol.
Louisiana’s fiscal straits and his refusal to raise taxes to avoid the education cuts have increased local speculation that Jindal, who has already held an array of political jobs in his short career, is eyeing an exit.
But in the interview, he indicated he was staying put.
Asked if he’d ever want to be president, Jindal recited his stock answer — “I’ve got the best job I will ever have.”
Pressed on whether he had any desire to return to Washington, Jindal offered a flat “no.”
Plainly, though, he’s interested in joining the political conversation beyond his home state.
Jindal uses the 283-page tome to tell his only-in-America story as the son of immigrants growing up in a Southern university town, to tout his record in office and to lay out a roster of policy prescriptions and political reforms.
What’s striking about the book — and what illustrates the degree to which it’s aimed at raising his profile among grass-roots conservatives — is the harshness of his attacks on Democrats, the media, elites and the political establishment in Washington.
Such broadsides are, of course, standard fare for aspiring Republicans. But they don’t necessarily square with the image Jindal has carved out in Louisiana as a get-it-done, wonky reformer more interested in ideas and solutions than in lobbing bombs across the aisle.
In addition to the shots he takes at Obama, Jindal also recounts anecdotes that depict reporters as out-of-touch liberals, turns around the famous William F. Buckley line to claim he’d rather be governed “by the first one hundred names in the Baton Rouge, Louisiana, phone book than the faculty of Harvard University” and approvingly cites the old saw that “dumb people need representation too ... and they surely have it in Washington.”
Jindal dismissed any notion that the pugnacious tone of his book was in conflict with his pragmatic brand.
“I have always been a principled conservative who doesn’t believe government is the answer to everything, but I am also somebody who is deeply interested in practical policy solutions,” he said. “I don’t care if they are Democratic or Republican ideas.”
But for some of the toughest language in his book, Jindal made no apologies — and was even feistier in person.
He writes that “the sad truth is that serving in Congress is now often an apprenticeship program for lobbyists-in-waiting” and likens the image of the former members reminiscing about their days in Congress with current members to “aging high school football players recalling their glory days on the field."
“These politicians-turned-lobbyists exploit their political access to cash in on what was supposed to be public service,” Jindal concludes.
Reminded that he served with former members of Congress from Louisiana whom he now suggests are exploiting their time in government, the governor allowed that former Republican congressmen like Jim McCrery and Richard Baker “served the state honorably.”
But Jindal also used the opportunity to broaden his indictment.
“There is almost this attitude among elected officials that [lobbying] is their deferred compensation,” he said. “I think their attitude is: Look, my buddies in law school are all making a lot more money than I did in private law firms, and I didn’t get to make that much money, and so this is my way of making up for all those lost earning years. To me that’s ridiculous. ... People should come back to their states, and people should go back to the private sector after they’re done in public service.”
The governor did, though, say in the interview that his party ought to be careful about not attacking political opponents personally. Having once been attacked for his own given Indian name, Jindal winced when reminded about those conservatives who mock Obama by referring to him as “Hussein,” his middle name.
“I think we can disagree with the president without being disagreeable,” he said. “Name-calling is not going to win elections or convince the American people."
Recalling some of the shots at President George W. Bush, Jindal added: “We didn’t like it when there was a Republican president, so we shouldn’t engage in that kind of activity when there is a Democratic president.”
The GOP, he said, should take the fight to the opposition based on ideas.
And there is no lack of them in his book.
Jindal joked that his advisers urged him to cut out some of the denser discourse on health care policy.
But he devotes an entire chapter to the topic, offering a list of what he calls “market-based health care reforms,” and another one on how to pay for Medicare. He also offers extended treatment on energy, tweaking those in his own party for their single-minded focus on oil exploration.
Conservatives, he writes, “need to do more than simply shout ‘Drill, baby, drill’ — we need to aggressively pursue the next generation of renewable and clean energy production technologies.”
Jindal also writes at length about cultural issues and national security. But, as made clear with his denunciation of Washington’s lobbyist culture, he’s as interested in reforming the political process as he is in addressing policy matters.
He proposes a “seven-step recovery program” for Congress that includes such perennials as a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and a line-item veto but also argues for some newer ideas, such as requiring a supermajority to raise taxes and having the body become a part-time legislature.
Such notions, of course, would be most easily implemented if Jindal were president.
But as he gears up for his reelection next year, the governor dismissed the notion.
“This is not a campaign manifesto; this is not a platform,” he said of the book. “This is my contribution to help get our country to get back on track.”
© 2010 Capitol News Company, LLC
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“I understand you need to say all of this, I know you need to say this, that you are facing political pressure,” Jindal quotes Obama telling him. When the governor said he was concerned about people losing their jobs, he said the president cited national polls showing that people supported the ban.
“The human element seemed invisible to the White House,” he writes. Couple that with the fact that it was exposed that Obama altered the spill report to lie about whatt he scientists told him.
Impach this jerk already!
