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Just a few days into his internship with Rep. Jim McCrery (R-La.) in the early 1990s, Bobby Jindal felt he could do more than just sort the mail. He walked into McCrery’s office and asked for “substantive” policy work. McCrery gave it to him; he told the Brown University student to write him a paper on the problems of Medicare.
“I’m thinking, ‘I’ll never see this guy again,’ “ McCrery said.
Two weeks later, Jindal dropped a thick manuscript on his boss’s desk. McCrery, impressed, recalled thinking: “Was this guy for real?”
Jindal, now the governor of Louisiana, is poised again to get ahead. He appears to be on Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) short list of running mates, having been invited to the senator’s Arizona ranch last month with other veep prospects. Jindal has become a staple surrogate for McCain on cable news and hosted McCain’s prime-time speech on the night Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) claimed the Democratic nomination.
In many ways, Jindal is what McCain is not: a young executive from outside the Beltway with cultural conservative bona fides. He’s also a Rhodes Scholar, a healthcare wonk and the youngest, as well as the first Indian-American, governor. His barrier-breaking biography is reminiscent of Obama’s.
“I’ve seen this Obama campaign before, and it was in the ‘03 Jindal race” for governor, said Phillip Stutts, Jindal’s campaign manager that year. “His ‘change you can believe’ was about a young, intelligent candidate with a great family and a ton of ability who could come in the state and shake things up and bring honor to state politics.”
Jindal fell short that year, winning the most votes in the first round of voting but losing to Democratic Lt. Gov. Kathleen Blanco in a runoff. But Stutts said that Jindal refused to play dirty with Blanco, who had questioned Jindal’s experience in ads and had one supporter who called Jindal, who converted to Catholicism, a Hindu and an Arab-American.
“We wanted to go out and hit back,” Stutts said. “And he said that this campaign is going to be a positive campaign.”
Despite losing, Jindal raised his profile as a fresh face with a clean past. He went on to win a House seat in 2004 and then, after Blanco’s response to Hurricane Katrina was criticized, the governor’s mansion last year.
Jindal’s backers for the No. 2 slot, a group that includes Rush Limbaugh and Grover Norquist, say that despite his age, Jindal has more experience than Obama.
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