The Louisiana governor was found dead in a bedroom of the
official mansion, lipstick smears all up and down his knee and
thigh. He seemed to have been poisoned. And there would barely be
time to bury him before a big succession battle would take place,
with several politicians in line for power actually trying
desperately to avoid the job. One was a hopeless drunk. One was
mobbed up. And all of them had crooked deals and crooked alliances
that couldn’t survive the light of day. Big money was at risk also,
especially with regard to a toxic chemical dumping scheme….
Okay, okay, this didn’t really happen. It’s from a novel, a
rambunctious (and at times uproarious) fictional ride through
Louisiana’s infamous political circus. Last
of the Red Hot Poppas, by accomplished New Orleans
journalist/author Jason Berry, is well worth the read.
The sad truth, though, is that Louisiana’s reputation for
political skullduggery is so well established that most of you
readers probably thought I was writing about a real-life scandal
sometime in the Bayou State’s past. Berry’s novel works because,
even as satire, its premise is at least somewhat believable.
Beginning Sunday, the edifice of that reputation may be
dismantled, brick by brick.
Fulfilling the most galvanizing of all of his campaign promises,
in his first major act in office, new Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal
will convene his state Legislature for a special session this
Sunday devoted entirely to ethics reforms. If he succeeds in his
battle against corruption, he will have launched a term in office
that as soon as four years from now could unite a conservative
movement, and a Republican Party, that now is more fractured than
at any time in the past three-plus decades. Jindal has the
potential, without a doubt, to be the Barack Obama of the right —
just as inspirational, and far more substantive.
Jindal’s agenda for the special session includes stringent new
restrictions on lobbyists’ wining, dining, and gifting of public
officials; seriously expanded financial disclosure requirements for
all public officials (including judges who long have operated under
their own rules); new prohibitions against state contracts for
legislators and their family members; significant new requirements
for lobbyist transparency (including a publicly searchable
database); annual ethics training for all public officials;
expanded whistleblower protections; greater disclosure of campaign
contributions; and assorted other measures. Public interest in the
session seems high, and public support seems strong. Moreover, a
vast turnover in both houses of the Legislature has brought in a
host of new lawmakers who at least claim to be reformers.
Reformist editorial writer Lanny Keller of the daily Baton
Rouge Advocate, a 30-year veteran political observer and
sometime participant, told me Wednesday that Jindal’s press
conference outlining his session plans was “a masterful
performance.” Keller said the Jindal reforms have momentum behind
them.
Still, he warned, he is just starting to pick up “a slow
undercurrent of the old timers” — longtime interest group honchos
and a few veteran legislators — who may be rallying for some
pushback efforts. Against them, said Keller, Jindal has “a very
green crew. Are they going to be able to fight in the trenches of
the Legislature over the details of the bills? They are very
bright, but this is their first big test.”
And even if they succeed as well as most observers expect, their
tests will only get harder still. Louisiana’s economy is
notoriously unsteady, a seemingly random phantasmagoria of booms
and busts. The state’s biggest city is of course still plagued by
the grim aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And its coastal marshlands
are eroding at a frightening rate, so far defying most of the
feeble state and federal efforts to reverse the loss.
But Jindal himself is famously brilliant. He’s also the rare
technocrat who boasts “people skills” almost as well developed as
his policy analyses. And his work ethic is legendary. If anybody
can figure out how to overcome all of the challenges ahead, without
letting success go to his head or that of his administration of
whiz kids, it’s Jindal.
GRANTED, NATIONAL OBSERVERS would be wrong to pronounce Jindal a
success before he is several years into his term, at least. Many a
would-be reformer has fallen prey to hubris or has been defeated
while tilting at one windmill too many. (Reader, you can insert
here the proper warning from Southern literature, “the stench of
the didie to the stench of the shroud,” and all that rot.) For good
reason,
though, conservatives believe that this particular reformer is
different: more principled, more intelligent, more energetic, more
determined.
It is worth noting that author Jason Berry does not let the very
real cultural rot chronicled in his novel smother all chances of
redemption. Integrity, in Berry’s telling, does have at least a
fighting chance. (Berry is no conservative politically, but his
ethical compass always points North.)
The good news in Louisiana is that public sentiment in Bobby
Jindal’s favor gives him far more than a fighting chance. And if he
wins this first fight, and then starts winning in broader public
policy fights…well, the nation as a whole could always use
another breath of fresh air.
