Louisiana Voice

By now, only a recluse living on a houseboat somewhere in the murky bayous of Louisiana is unaware that Piyush Jindal deflects all questions about his presidential aspirations with the stock line, “I have the job I want.”

Yeah, right. That’s why the Boy Blunder spends more time on the road than Hope and Crosby (if you don’t get that, don’t worry about it; you’d have no reason to know the reference unless you’re into really old ‘40s and ‘50s movies).

So, let’s try this one: He’s been absent so much that his photo has appeared on milk cartons throughout Louisiana.

Positioning himself for a presidential run in 2016? Ridiculous!

That’s why he was named chairman of the National Republican Governors’ Association for 2013.

And that’s why he started taking potshots at Mitt Romney literally hours after Romney lost the presidential election to President Obama.

And that, apparently, is why he wrote that sophomoric essay on the so-called fiscal cliff facing Congress for Politico that contains all the intellectual depth of that essay he wrote about his conducting an exorcism on “Susan,” a fellow student at Brown University.

That little article brought appropriate ridicule from New York Times columnist Jonathan Chait who pointed out, correctly, that Jindal has little to no grasp of fiscal realities.

Chait could have been really cruel had he simply pointed out that Piyush has failed to have a balanced budget a single year since becoming governor. And he could have slam-dunked Piyush had he told his readers of Jindal’s patchwork on the state budget with one-time money.

Instead, Chait was satisfied with just smirking a little as he referred to Piyush as a sitting governor “with presidential ambitions.

National aspirations? That’s just crazy talk. Why on earth would he choose to ignore the Louisiana media’s repeated requests for interviews while courting Politico, the Washington Post, CNN and Fox News if he planned on moving up the political food chain?

Presidential ambitions? Why would anyone think such a thing?

Well, if you happen to be LSU mass communications professor Bob Mann, who also has a political blog called Something Like the Truth, you might cruise the internet highway in search of domain names.

That’s what Mann did and the results came quickly. He typed in key words like “Bobby Jindal,” “president,” and “2016.”

Bingo!

Up popped http://www.jindal2016.com/, and when he keyed it in, his search automatically redirected him to Gov. Piyush’s campaign website, http://www.bobbyjindal.com/.

“That really jumped out at me,” Mann said. “To me, it says they want people who think Jindal is running for president to find bobbyjindal.com. Mann, a leading political expert (his curriculum vitae includes work for Sens. Russell Long, John Breaux and Bennett Johnston and former Gov. Kathleen Blanco), said he considers his discovery just another indication that Piyush will run in 2016. “There’s no doubt whatsoever about it; he wants to be president.”

Jindal’s office, to no one’s surprise, did not respond to a request for comment (one has to wonder why he retains a press secretary) on the website. A spokesperson for Jindal’s campaign office, however, disavows ownership of the site and is unsure of the reason it redirects to the governor’s website.