Jindal the true believer

Details magazine has a lengthy profile of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. Whatever else he is, the man is not an underachiever. Excerpt:

As an undergrad at Brown, Jindal interned for Jim McCrery, a Republican congressman from Shreveport, Louisiana. One week into the job, Jindal asked if he could have something substantive to work on. Annoyed, McCrery asked him to formulate a solution to a problem considered intractable by those on Capitol Hill: Medicare. "He just grinned," McCrery recalls. "I expected never to see him again." Two weeks later, Jindal plopped a thick manuscript on McCrery's desk: Medicare, solved (at least to Jindal's thinking). Jindal's analysis, McCrery says, "was excellent." Especially from a 20-year-old.

By 1994, Jindal had been to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and had taken a lucrative job as a consultant in Washington, D.C. But he was already restless. He called McCrery to recommend himself for Louisiana's secretary of health and hospitals, a cabinet-level position involving oversight of 40 percent of the state budget. "Remember," McCrery says, "Bobby was like 23 years old. So I asked if he'd consider a deputy position." Jindal said no. A year later, McCrery got Jindal an audience with Republican governor Mike Foster. "When they told me he was 24, I wasn't very interested," Foster says. But in person Jindal won him over and Foster hired him on the spot. "Most people who border on genius," Foster says, "they're not too personable. But he's personable."

That combustible mixture--high-caliber smarts and higher-caliber ambition--combined with a smooth, polished demeanor, has fueled Jindal's rocket-ship rise through Louisiana politics. Jindal calls himself a "policy wonk at heart"; ask him about an issue and you'll hear all 31 points of a 31-point plan. Yet his wonkiness is decidedly (Bill) Clintonesque: suffused with the gleam of personality and devoid of lecture-hall drone. "I want to be the most boring but most effective governor," he says. "My wife says I have the boring part down."

If Jindal has a future in national politics, he's going to have a tough time explaining the writing in the 1990s he did about his encounter with the demonic. (A truncated version of that story is here, but you have to purchase the whole thing.) The Details piece mentions it, but TPM offers more quotes.

I applaud Jindal's courage in talking publicly about the things he witnessed. I believe him, too. None of this hurts him, obviously, as governor of Louisiana, nor will it be a big deal in the South in general, should he run on a national ticket. But he's going to get clobbered by it elsewhere.

Or will he? Americans are a religious people, and tend toward superstition, like most people on the planet. According to a Harris poll, one in four believes in astrology. Only one in four rejects belief in the Devil. Jindal's experience will be fodder for the media and the late-night comedians, but I'd guess that most Americans wouldn't find it unbelievable or beyond the pale. I certainly wouldn't -- but longtime readers know that.