McCain's Veepstakes

And they’re down to the wire, racing neck and neck. Who’s it going to be? Jindal? Crist? Or maybe Pawlenty?

Ah heck, who knows. All we do know, or at least what I think I know, is that John McCain’s VP is going to have to be a governor, youngerish, and (crossing my fingers) conservative in some way.

Here’s a little from an article in the International Herald Tribune:

Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, on Friday is scheduled to meet with two Republican governors who have been prominently mentioned as potential running mates, according to Republicans familiar with McCain’s plan.

The two governors, Charlie Crist, of Florida, and Bobby Jindal, of Louisiana, have both accepted invitations to meet with McCain at his home in Arizona, according to Republican familiars with the decision. One Republican said that Mitt Romney, a former rival of McCain for the presidential nomination was also expected to visit him this weekend. Romney’s advisers declined to comment.

My pick, from a couple of months ago, was Mr. Jindal. From what I have read (here’s a link to a particularly good one from Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review) he is reliably conservative. Sure socially conservative (fine) but, more importantly, conservative-conservative. He wants to cut taxes, bring some sanity back to his state (Louisiana), and he stresses personal liberty.

Here’s some more from the article at the International Herald Tribune about Governor Jindal:

Jindal, who was born in Baton Rouge to a family that had just arrived there from the Punjab area of India, took office in January after serving three years in the House of Representatives. In a race with four candidates, Jindal, who was born a Hindu but converted to Roman Catholicism as a teenager, won 54 percent of the vote after campaigning as a social conservative, opposing human embryonic stem cell research and abortion in any form and favoring teaching “intelligent design” in schools as an alternative to evolution.

But Jindal also has a reputation as a policy wonk, like the Clintons, with a specialty in health care issues. After graduating in 1991 from Brown University, where he majored in biology and public policy, and attending Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, he worked for the management consulting firm McKinsey and Company and was executive director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare. He later served as Secretary of the Louisiana state Department of Health and Hospitals and in the Bush Administration as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for planning and evaluation.

Oh, and there’s one other thing. His heritage is Indian. No, not Native American Indian, but Indian Indian. From India!

Personally, I couldn’t care less. But others, like the McCain camp, might be weighing that as one of the requirements seeing as the democrat ticket is going to at least have one minority candidate. If McCain wants to pick Jindal because of his skin color, great, because that means we will be getting a great number 2 in the White House.

So here’s to hoping that Mr. Jindal impresses Mr. McCain enough this weekend to make me actually vote for McCain’s ticket come November. Otherwise, I can’t say for sure if I will be voting for president this year. BigT