(Oct. 26, The Advocate/Times-Picayune) If Bobby Jindal is under consideration to be Secretary of Health and Human Services in a new Donald Trump presidency, he could be Trump’s star appointment.
Yeah, yeah. As you see the Politico report that the former governor is on Trump’s radar, you can fulminate all you want about Jindal leaving office in 2016 with greatly diminished popularity. Make all the arguments you want about him spending his second term more focused on an upcoming presidential run than on minding the store in Louisiana. But also concentrate on what got him elected as governor in 2007 and then reelected in a landslide in 2011 with 66% of the vote in a ten-candidate field.
Here’s the reality: Jindal, apart from politicking, is a gifted administrator with deep expertise in health care policy. His professional experience and conceptual brilliance make him an ideal choice to head the sprawling federal health department.
By most accounts, Jindal did a superb job in the 1990s as former Louisiana Gov. Mike Foster’s secretary of Health and Hospitals. He took a department with a deficit estimated as high as $400 million and left with accumulated surpluses of $220 million, while overseeing Louisiana’s rise to third place nationally in child health care screenings. He was seen as a relatively nonpartisan figure, too, which is why Louisiana Democratic U.S. Sen. John Breaux appointed him executive director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare. Jindal and the commission did a superb job, but their policy recommendations fell by the wayside in the midst of the vicious politicking surrounding then-President Bill Clinton’s scandal with intern Monica Lewinsky.
Later, before being elected first to Congress and then as governor, Jindal served in the G.W. Bush administration as assistant secretary of HHS. He knows the agency backwards and forwards.
Finally, Jindal notched some major successes in his first term as governor, earning a big improvement in the state’s bond rating….. [The full column is here.]
