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Saturday, November 15, 2008

Jindal and India

It seems a bit premature but a columnist at The Times of India is getting excited at the prospect of Bobby Jindal becoming president of the United States.

To return to the issue posed at the start of this column, when could an Indian American become US president? It could be as soon as four years from now. Piyush ‘Bobby’ Jindal, governor of Louisiana, is a hot tip for becoming the Republican candidate in 2012. He has the youth and charisma that McCain lacks. The Republican Party needs a fresh new face to challenge Obama. Jindal is not white, yet that seems not to matter at all, not even in a party long associated with notions of white superiority. Obama’s victory has truly sent the US over the racial threshold..
I think "party long associated with white superiority" is a pretty misleading description of the Republican Party, but I do like the name of the column: Swaminomics. And now that President-elect Obama has omitted India, by accident or design, from his early phone calls, it would be good to have a president who could hardly fail to be aware of that strategically important relationship