How the oil spill saved Bobby Jindal

The irony is that Jindal’s expertise on the nitty-gritty details of Medicare reform and a range of other complex domestic issues meant that he was one of very few Republican leaders capable of making an incisive yet accessible critique of President Obama’s domestic agenda. Yet instead of playing to his strengths, he channeled a good ol’ boy tone that came across as cloying and unpersuasive. For whatever reason, it is crisis that brings out the best in Jindal, as we’ve seen in recent weeks.

With his data-rich calls for the creation of sand booms and other coastal defense measures, and his very visible efforts to pressure the federal government to take more aggressive action, Jindal has come to embody the response to the oil spill. There’s something decidedly unconservative about Jindal’s hands-on approach. Like former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who made a point of taking a leading role in responding to hurricanes and other natural disasters during his tenure, Jindal is playing the role of governor-as-action-hero. Whether or not this will prove more effective than Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour’s more hands-off approach is unclear. What is clear is that Jindal is filling a psychological need: if nothing else, many Louisianans feel helpless in response to the slow-motion disaster, and the governor is giving voice to their anger and their desire to take action—any action—in defense of their way of life. Many experts take a more fatalistic approach to Jindal’s call for creating a series of barrier islands, suggesting that it will most likely fail to prevent severe damage to coastal marshes. Somehow, how, it seems perverse to expect the people of southern Louisiana to grin and bear the oil spill. And so Jindal’s mix of anger and overoptimism fits the moment.