The Bobby Jindal Exploratory Committee is now registering media for a “special announcement” event Wednesday, June 24, held at the Pontchartrain Center near downtown New Orleans.
The GOP field includes several good governors who can point to big achievements in their home states. Rick Perry can point to Texas’s explosive job-creation record on his watch. Scott Walker can point to the extremely consequential reforms to the public sector and unions.
But perhaps no other governor in the field took over a state in dire straits as bad as Louisiana’s were in 2007. Hurricane Katrina did enormous physical damage, obviously, and some residents fled the storm and never came back. But the economy was a mess, the corruption was endemic, a culture of incompetence saturated the state government, the budget was a mess, the schools were bad . . . the hurricane passed, but the dark cloud of gloom remained overhead.
Not everything is perfect in Lousiana today, but the state has come a long way from the mess at the end of Kathleen Blanco’s lone term. There’s a general sense of optimism about the economy, high satisfaction with the quality of schools, and increased interest in home purchases, even if there’s frustration with state government. Louisiana may not be the best place to live in the country today, but it was among the worst places to live the day Jindal took office. A Jindal presidential campaign announcement with New Orleans as a backdrop would be fitting.