Skelator Speaks

Did you catch Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's Republican response to President Obama's address to Congress? Wow! What a disaster. Not only did Jindal look like death warmed over, but he spoke in this weird sing-song kind of voice that made me think he really wanted to replace the late Mr. Rogers in his neighborhood. "Can we say government is bad, boys and girls?" "Who needs to monitor those silly volcanoes that might blow up and kill a couple of people? Not us! We can take our train to fantasy land."

From a political perspective, Jindal's argument left me wondering just where the hell this guy has been living for the past few years? Doesn't he think the federal government is needed to warn people of major dangers, like approaching hurricanes? Or does he think that individual citizens can band together to do that sort of stuff themselves. Oh, wait. They have. It's called a "government". There was just too much evidence last night that Bobby Jindal has quaffed the Nancy Reagan "Just Say No!" Kool-Aid. Hell. even Republicans thought that he was a disaster:



Paul Krugman also was less than impressed by the Louisiana governor-here:

February 25, 2009, 11:08 am
What should government do? A Jindal meditation

What is the appropriate role of government?

Traditionally, the division between conservatives and liberals has been over the role and size of the welfare state: liberals think that the government should play a large role in sanding off the market economy’s rough edges, conservatives believe that time and chance happen to us all, and that’s that.

But both sides, I thought, agreed that the government should provide public goods — goods that are nonrival (they benefit everyone) and nonexcludable (there’s no way to restrict the benefits to people who pay.) The classic examples are things like lighthouses and national defense, but there are many others. For example, knowing when a volcano is likely to erupt can save many lives; but there’s no private incentive to spend money on monitoring, since even people who didn’t contribute to maintaining the monitoring system can still benefit from the warning. So that’s the sort of activity that should be undertaken by government.

So what did Bobby Jindal choose to ridicule in this response to Obama last night? Volcano monitoring, of course.

And leaving aside the chutzpah of casting the failure of his own party’s governance as proof that government can’t work, does he really think that the response to natural disasters like Katrina is best undertaken by uncoordinated private action? Hey, why bother having an army? Let’s just rely on self-defense by armed citizens.

The intellectual incoherence is stunning. Basically, the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.

So, Bobby Jindal, go stand in the corner for five years.