Jindalmania!

Now that "Bobby" Jindal has left nothing but a huge, rat-infested smoking hole where Louisiana used to be, let's review the words of Megan McArdle, Girl Political Genius:

[T]he guy just has skills. His message, like Obama's, is one of hope and actual change; he tends to emphasize the work he's done reforming Louisiana's notoriously corrupt political culture. And like Obama, he has the charisma to put it over. Nearly all prominent politicians are extremely charismatic. Being in a room with them is like being in a room with the sun; you can't really look anywhere else. But some have it more than others, and Jindal has a lot of it.  

He's also a really good political organizer, which is how a Republican carries Louisiana (to be sure, the Democratic governor's monstrously incompetent performance during Hurricane Katrina helped quite a bit.) And on the other metrics by which Obama stands out--his academic chops, his meteoric rise--Jindal actually betters Obama. The guy was accepted to both Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School, but decided to go for a political career, and accepted his Rhodes Scholarship instead. At 25 he was appointed Lousiana's Secretary of Health and Hospitals; at 28, he became the youngest-ever president of the University of Louisiana system.  

You can say many things about him--he's written some nutty things about Protestants, and participated in an exorcism, which means he's gonna have some 'splaining to do if he runs for President. But he is not George W. Bush, or John Kerry, or Al Gore, or any of the other range of uninspired sons of the gentry who have graced our political landscape recently. He is phenomenally smart, and phenomenally talented, and phenomenally likeable. And I'm sure that complacent Democrats dismissing him as a goober with a God complex suits his current plans just fine.

 She is paid a small fortune to write about politics and you aren't.