Leadership and Crisis

by Bobby Jindal

  Having attended Brown University, studied at Oxford, and served in the highest levels of government, I have spent a great deal of time interacting with folks who would be classified as our country’s “elites.” I’ve found many of these folks, who predominately reside in the Boston-New York-Washington corridor, harbor a condescending view of people of faith.

  Never was this more evident than in the famous slur carried in a front-page Washington Post story in the mid-1990s, in which a reporter dismissed evangelical Christians as being “poor, uneducated and easy to command.” This is the journalistic equivalent of saying, “If you are a person of faith in America you are, de facto, stupid.”

  But not to worry, in the ensuing firestorm that writer was forced to clarify his comments by noting that he should have said “most” evangelical Christians are “poor, uneducated and easy to command.” Oh. Thanks. I feel so much better now.

  The Post’s ombudsman later attempted to temper the outrage by explaining that readers needed to realize most journalists don’t know any of “these people.” Oh. That clears it up.

  To this day, it surprises me how little the national press understands about faith. When I was serving in Washington as executive director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare, I had lunch with a well-known reporter from the Post to discuss the Commission’s progress. Before we ate she saw me bow my head and say grace, ever so briefly mind you. She immediately asked me if everything was okay. She was startled and fascinated by what I had done. And the fact that it startled her startled me. She was not rude or condescending, and later we became good friends. She just didn’t have any frame of reference for a person who would say grace in a public restaurant before lunch.

  But some of our top national reporters are condescending, and it goes beyond matters of faith. I was at a cocktail party in Washington, D.C. (my first mistake), when a lady I had never met came up to me to apologize. Not for anything she had done, mind you. “I’d just like to apologize to you for all the discrimination you have had to endure,” she said.

  I was perplexed. She offered condemnation of my home state disguised as an apology. It was classic elitist sentiment.

  But for sure, I hear more condescension toward faith than any other topic. For many of our country’s elites, faith is something for the uneducated, the uninformed, and the unenlightened. It’s something for us to cling to when our plane loses electrical power. It can be charming or quaint, or it can be dangerous, but either way, it’s for the weak of mind, for those folks living between the coasts out there in “fly over country” who don’t know any better.

  I see it in diametrically opposite terms. In my view, true seeking, true intellectual curiosity, and true devotion to logic, science, and the laws of nature lead one invariably to the Creator.

  The Washington press has a tough job, and they do some invaluable work, but they’re prone to their own biases. This reminds me of a tiresome conversation I’ve had on many occasions. A journalist based somewhere in the upper east coast or in California will come to interview me for some national publication. He has somehow made it past my communications director, which is an incredible feat, so I have some respect for him right off the bat. He comes having heard rumors that I am well-educated and maybe even halfway smart.

  So he invariably starts with the same line of questioning. “How could you, an educated person with a reputation as an intellectual, oppose same sex marriage?... or oppose some forms of stem cell research?... or favor the teaching of ‘intelligent design’?... or be a Republican?... or not drink Frappucino?”

  I’m always tempted to respond by asking, “How could a person like you possibly have made it onto my calendar?”

  When I speak to national reporters, some shoot me a mock sympathetic look, as if to say, “It’s okay, I know you can’t really believe those things, I know you just have to say that stuff to get elected here in the Deep South.” They believe one of two things must be true: either I don’t really hold these socially conservative viewpoints, or I’m really not that smart. Oh well, so much for being smart.

  I say what I mean and I mean what I say. It’s not a political strategy. I’m just one of those people out here in America, desperately “clinging to guns and religion,” as the president would say. But the Washington press figures I must be pretty dim, because if I were smart, I’d be a liberal.

  Once, during my first campaign, a New York Times reporter came to town to interview me. He had zero interest in my background, in any aspect of my campaign, or in anything that was happening in Louisiana. He couldn’t care less that I had introduced the most detailed plan ever seen in a Louisiana gubernatorial campaign.

  The reporter only wanted to talk about issues that concerned him personally—issues on which he disagreed with me, like same-sex marriage, abortion, and the origins of life. Of course, I have strong views on those topics, but they were not major issues in the campaign, partly because my Democratic opponent held similar conservative views to my own on many of these questions.

  Try as I may, I could not interest this guy in the big issues facing Louisiana. The voters focused on matters of taxation, budgets, job creation, and infrastructure, but the reporter was obviously bored with it all.

  That night, after the interview, this reporter had dinner with a reporter from another national newspaper at an upscale restaurant in Baton Rouge. This occurred, mind you, back when reporters had decent expense accounts, before the newspaper business hit on hard times.

  During dinner, the Times reporter hectored his colleague about how she wasn’t attacking me enough for my Neanderthal views. He bragged that he was going to just savage Bobby Jindal in his article. He had it all planned out, even though he had more interviews to complete the next day, after which he was going to file a story that would be a leftist rant of the highest order.

  But there was one problem: his waiter, who overheard his conversation, was a supporter of mine. So imagine the reporter’s surprise when he showed up the next day to interview outgoing Republican governor Mike Foster. One of Foster’s staffers pulled the reporter aside and repeated much of the dinner conversation back to him. The blood drained from the reporter’s face, leaving it a shade of white considerably lighter than the parchment you are now reading.

  Suffice it to say, after this confrontation, the reporter quickly left town, and when his article appeared it was actually pretty mild. He even later called the office to sort of apologize and figure out if we were going to complain to his editor. We did not.

  Let this be a lesson to all reporters travelling to Louisiana; I have friends everywhere.

  Seriously, to be fair, there are plenty of principled, objective journalists. But there are fewer than there used to be. (Of course, they might fire back by arguing there are a lot fewer honest politicians than there used to be. Fair point.)

  Despite the kinds of run-ins I’ve described here, I’ve always had a pretty decent relationship with the press. I’ve held quite a few posts in government, and in each instance I’ve found that honesty and candor go a long way with most reporters. Over time you learn who the biased reporters are and you try to steer around them, which of course they don’t like.

  Some have said I’ve actually enjoyed pretty sympathetic press coverage over the years. Well, maybe so, but there was this one incident that didn’t go so well.

  I was selected to give the Republican response to President Obama’s first speech to Congress in February 2009, a time when the president was still extremely popular. Republican leaders in Washington knew me or had read good things about me, so they thought I would be a good choice to give the Republican Party response.

  Turns out they were wrong. I blew it.

  Truth be told, even though I’ve run for Congress twice, run for governor twice, and served in various high profile government positions, I have never mastered the teleprompter—and that is an understatement. In fact, I hate the teleprompter. And as the country found out that
night, the teleprompter hates me, too.

  So here you have me, a guy who is “teleprompter challenged,” versus the king of the teleprompter. Bad match up. My delivery was just awful. Even though it’s never been done before, I should have just winged the response.

  The press savaged my performance. I won’t repeat all their snarky comments, because this is my book and I’m the one who gets to make the snarky comments here. Several reporters tried to give me an out, by asking who wrote the speech and whether I had a speech coach. That last one cracked me up. Did I have a speech coach? You’re kidding, right?

  The bottom line is this: it was my speech, I delivered it poorly, and I take full responsibility for it. When you screw up, it’s time to man up.

  Interestingly, many people who read the speech, but did not see it, thought it was great. I stand by the content of the speech—I just should have hired Russell Crowe to deliver it. I’m simply not very good at the “showman” side of politics.

  Reading the speech now is kind of eerie. Delivered barely a month after Obama’s inauguration, the speech warned against expanding government and against piling up debt through excessive spending. Less than two years later, the Obama administration and its Democratic allies in Congress have spent more money, wracked up more debt, and expanded government more than I ever thought possible.

  CHAPTER 3

  YELLOW PAGES

  I came to America as a pre-existing condition. Mom had won a place at Louisiana State University’s graduate school. My dad, newly arrived in America with mom and not knowing a soul, had to find a job. So he sat down at the kitchen table in early 1971 and opened up the yellow pages. Starting with the A’s, he made cold calls to local businesses in his heavily accented English, eventually landing a job offer at a railroad. When he confessed to the business owner that he didn’t have a car yet, in true Louisiana hospitality, the man offered to have co-workers pick him up and take him home every day. Welcome to America.

  For a young couple arriving in the United States from halfway around the world, it must have been a frightening and exhilarating experience. My dad often told me, “Son, Americans can do anything.” That was America’s promise—and its challenge: nothing was impossible if you were willing to work hard.

  My father grew up in Khanpur, a rural village in the Punjab region of India, the middle child of nine, the son of a small shopkeeper who sold medical supplies and an odd assortment of other goods. Money was tight because most people who bought things from my grandfather did so on credit or through barter. My dad grew up in a home without running water or electricity. Although he came from uneducated parents, he developed an unwavering commitment to education, eventually earning a degree in civil engineering.

  My mom came from a middle-class Indian home, so she had it a little better. Her father was a banker. It may sound good, but by American standards it was a simple life. Her parents were more educated and necessities were more available, but my mother dreamt of America, the proverbial land of opportunity.

  One day opportunity knocked for my parents. My father had a great job in India, but my pregnant mother was offered a scholarship to complete a graduate degree in nuclear physics at LSU. She was excited, but nervous too, because it meant leaving behind family and security for a new life in America. Finally, she reluctantly wrote to LSU explaining that she couldn’t accept the scholarship because she was pregnant. LSU wrote back and promised her a month off for childbirth if she changed her mind. LSU was so accommodating, and the opportunity to come to America so thrilling, that my parents accepted. (For this reason alone, I’m an LSU Tiger fan for life!) So my parents stepped out on faith, secured green cards, packed up a few suitcases, said their goodbyes, and took off for this exotic new place called Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

  They moved into student housing and quickly discovered what most Americans know: health insurance can be expensive and frustrating. They were informed that their insurance plan would not cover my mother’s pregnancy. In short, I came into this world as a “pre-existing condition.” In healthcare, like every other facet of life, it was important for my dad to be self-reliant; he would never ask anyone for charity or help. So he went to the doctor shortly before my birth and set up an installment plan to pay the bill. When he explained to me later how he paid for my birth, I asked him, “What would have happened if you had missed a payment on me? Would they repossess?”

  “Trust me,” he said dryly. “If that was an option, we would have skipped a payment.”

  My father had grown up around extreme poverty; he’d witnessed people starving to death and dying from easily curable illnesses. He didn’t take healthcare or housing or even food for granted. He lived frugally, and I remember he once told me and my younger brother Nikesh, “If there is only enough food for some of us, we’ll always feed you first.” As a kid in middle-class America, with plenty all around, this seemed a bizarre thing to say.

  For my dad, it was all about survival. While we were never poor growing up, we were taught to make the most of every dollar. When I was small, I would stuff change into my piggy bank. To my father this made no sense. “The money should go into the bank and earn interest,” he would say. Dad was always practical.

  When I was four, I announced to my preschool class and anyone who would listen that my new name was “Bobby” (which I took from my favorite character on The Brady Bunch). My parents were puzzled. They’d already given me a name, Piyush, but Bobby stuck, and it’s a testament to my parents that they never felt the nickname was somehow a rejection of our heritage. In fact, they began calling me “Bobby,” too.

  Nicknames are pretty common here in Louisiana. You give people nicknames and they become comfortable and familiar, like an old pair of jeans. But you have to be careful that nicknames don’t take on a life of their own. We call one of our sons Boudreaux because when he was an infant we applied a lot of “Boudreaux’s Butt Paste” to you-know-where. (It’s a Louisiana thing, you might not understand.) But do we really want him having to explain how he earned the name? I don’t think so.

  My parents managed to walk the tightrope that many immigrants face: teaching their kids about their ancestral home while embracing all that is America. While some immigrant families have kept one foot firmly planted in the “home country,” my parents always raised us from the earliest days to think of ourselves not as hyphenated Americans, but simply as Americans. I don’t recall them ever referring to India as “home.” Louisiana was home. I remember seeing other immigrant families where the kids spent almost all their free time with people of the same background. But my parents were always going to crawfish boils and cookouts.

  One of the rites of passage for kids in Baton Rouge was attending summer camp. Mom and Dad sent us to every one imaginable, partly just to get us out of the house. They were confident enough in their Hindu identity to send us to camps organized by local churches. One summer my mom enrolled me in Camp Reznikoff, a Jewish summer camp. Being the only tan-skinned gentile in the group, I decided to throw my hat in the ring when it came time to elect a group president. I picked the prettiest counselor as my campaign manager and offered free candy to anyone who would vote for me. The strategy worked and I won. (Some say I learned the essentials of Louisiana politics early.) It never would have occurred to me that I might be rejected because I was a little different from the other kids. My parents didn’t raise me to think that way.

  I generally avoided trouble as a kid, but like all kids, I had my moments. In high school, growing up in a college town, there was always the allure of heading off with the college crowd. But the biggest pull was New Orleans, the big city with the big reputation only one hour down the highway. We knew it was the ultimate party town and sometimes we’d take off with friends for a Saturday trip. One mom tried to scare us. “Now don’t get into trouble boys, because in New Orleans they don’t put you in the jail—they put you under it.” That only made it all the more exciting, walking down Bourbon Street in the French Quarter
and sneaking into clubs to listen to great music. It was all pretty harmless fun. Some people might not think of New Orleans as wholesome, but I have to say, I enjoyed it—and I never got arrested, never experimented with drugs, and generally lived a life that was like Leave It to Beaver with a Louisiana twist.

  My brother and I held summer jobs as soon as we were old enough. To raise money for school activities I sold concessions at the LSU Tiger football games. We’d get to the stadium early and be there until midnight cleaning up. I can’t say it was the most fun I ever had, but it was, as they say, a learning experience—especially about the ingenious ways people can sneak alcohol into a sporting event.

  From my mom and dad, I learned that hard work is a virtue—it was one they practiced every day—and so was achievement. One of my father’s worst insults was to say that someone “had great potential.” It meant you weren’t working hard enough. If you brought home a 95 on a test, he wanted to know why it wasn’t a 100. Some subjects came easily to me and my brother, but we quickly learned that my dad wasn’t impressed if we only had to study for an hour to ace a test. Hard work had value in itself, and I discovered from him that the harder you work at something the easier it becomes.

  One thing I worked on unbeknownst to my parents—at least initially—was faith. It came fully into the open in shocking circumstances: I was lying in a hospital bed after I totaled my dad’s Toyota Corolla, which I had borrowed.

  My head had crashed through the driver’s side window, but at the time I was more worried about the damage to the car than to my health. I had argued with my parents to get a driver’s license at a young age, and now dad’s new car was totaled. I had pestered the ambulance driver and emergency room doctor for a damage report on the car; I wanted to repair the damage before my dad saw it.