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John Fund on Bobby Jindal’s win in Louisiana.
Bobby Jindal can’t hold down a job: That’s the joke circulating around Louisiana today about the election of Mr. Jindal, a son of immigrants from India, as governor. Mr. Jindal, a 36-year-old Republican congressman from the New Orleans suburbs, won 54% of the vote in Saturday’s election, avoiding the need for a runoff next month.
When he takes office in January he will be the nation’s youngest governor. But he has already held a glittering array of other positions of responsibility in his short career. As an undergraduate he worked as an intern for Rep. Jim McCrery, now the ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee. Then he became a Rhodes Scholar, got a master’s degree, and did a stint at McKinsey & Co. Gov. Mike Foster appointed him head of the state’s $4 billion health-care system at age 24. He went on to serve as director of a national commission on Medicare at 26, became president of the University of Louisiana system at 27, and a U.S. assistant secretary of health and human services at 29.
Four years ago, at age 32 ,he narrowly lost a race for governor to Democrat Kathleen Blanco, who dismissed his calls for reform of the state’s creaking bureaucracy as unnecessary. The next year Mr. Jindal won his congressional seat, but he never really stopped campaigning for governor. In August 2005 Hurricane Katrina roared through New Orleans, and Gov. Blanco’s response was so inadequate that she was effectively forced to retire. …
Michael Barone says 2008 is going to be different.
Things are not working out as Democratic congressional leaders expected. For the first eight months of this year, they struggled to find some way to shut down the American military effort in Iraq.
They took it for granted that we were stuck in a quagmire in Iraq, with continuous high casualties and very little to show for them. They pressed hard to get the Republican votes they needed to block a filibuster in the Senate and were cheered when some Republicans, like John Warner, seemed to lean their way. They worked hard over the August recess to pressure Republican House members to break ranks and vote with them.
But the Republicans mostly held fast. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell skillfully parried their thrusts in the Senate. House Minority Leader John Boehner persuaded most House Republicans to hang on. Then, over the summer, the news out of Iraq started to get better. …
Power Line with a couple of good posts.
Claudia Rosett comments on Kofi’s new job.
Anne Bayefsky tells us what UN membership is worth.
… The UN, we are told, is an essential institution because of its unique inclusivity. The argument goes that the goals and values of democracies on the world scene are dependent on their doing business with dictators as equals. One state, one vote. Regardless of the numbers of real people being subdued in various ways back home. Regardless of the financial contribution made by each member state to the world organization. Regardless of the extent to which the founding principles and purposes of the UN are flaunted by the member state every day of the week. …
Ralph Peters speculates about the Israeli raid in Syria.
ON Sept. 6, Israel struck a remote target in eastern Syria. The story didn’t really break for weeks, and details are still emerging – but the consensus view is that Israeli aircraft attacked a secret nuclear facility.
There’s much more to it than that. The echoes of that strike resound far beyond the Middle East.
Tel Aviv isn’t showing any leg when it comes to exactly who did what to whom. Airstrikes may have been synchronized with commando action on the ground. We don’t know, and, for now, secrets are being kept.
The circumstantial evidence is strong, though, that the terror-affiliated regime in Damascus had embarked on a nuclear-weapons program – with the help of the North Koreans (who, simultaneously, have been teasing us with suggestions that they’ll dismantle their own nuke effort if we pay them lavish tribute).
My own suspicion is that rent-an-expert Pakistanis were involved, too – with or without the blessing of Islamabad’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, an organization with often contradictory and always dubious loyalties. …
Jonathan Gurwitz has more on Pelosi as Sec. of State.
The last time House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did her best impersonation of a secretary of state, her amateur performance was merely reckless. This time it is dangerous.
Pelosi’s April visit to Syria should have demonstrated a fundamental about diplomacy — words matter.
Pelosi created an international tempest by claiming to bear a message for Syrian dictator Bashar Assad from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, one stating his country was prepared to engage in peace talks with its longtime enemy without preconditions. That would have marked a significant departure from six decades of Israeli practice.
Olmert did not make such a departure, which forced the Israeli Foreign Ministry to issue a clarification that contradicted Pelosi’s supposed communique. …
… Congress should go on record about the atrocities that claimed 1.5 million Armenian lives. Historical amnesia about the systematic slaughter of Armenians has encouraged many of the genocidal movements that followed. But after nine decades and with a war in Iraq, now is not the time to put U.S.-Turkish relations to a test.
Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, George Shultz, James Baker, Lawrence Eagleburger, Warren Christopher, Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell sent Pelosi a letter last month warning her the resolution would endanger U.S. national security interests. A real secretary of state would already know that.
Roger Simon with germane comments on new Redford flick.