So we understand why most of America considered Bobby Jindal's lame followup to President Obama's Not-State of the Union Address to be mildly underwhelming. After all, it was mildly underwhelming.
It's something of a surprise, however, to hear so many conservatives up in arms about Jindal's apparently disastrous speech.
Ask David Brooks, who says it was a disaster:
Townhall.com's Amanda Carpenter was not pleased:
"Ok, some conservative needs to start a campaign to fire whoever wrote this cheesy response and coached him to talk like this. I can't watch."
National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru on our fellow desi:
I thought his delivery was weak. The content will play well with the party base but seems unlikely to expand it. . . .
Even the ever-optimistic K-Lo (still presumably carrying a torch for Mitt Romney and Little Ricky Santorum) can't muster much blind faith:
E-mails I'm getting are from disappointed conservatives. They wanted a full-throated response to Obama and expected and/or wanted more. I wonder how many watched the response as if Bobby Jindal were the single alternative to what we've got now.
And the NRO readers - the right-wing rank-and-file - are even less thrilled:
I often disagree with how the Corner views political events with regard to how they play out in the sticks, so to speak, because I think you all get a little too wrapped up on the insiders world (hard not to when you are in the insiders' world!). But you are right and your optimistic emailers (that you posted) are wrong. Jindal's delivery was weak in this sense: he did not look like someone who could lead this country. He did not instill in me any confidence that he would or could be the standard-bearer in four or eight years, which I was looking for. I wanted him to do well. But he didn't. The message was fine (though I thought the ending about GOPers losing their way was weak — should have been up front, not at the end). It was not delivered in an offensive or off-putting way. But it was also not delivered in such a way as to rally people to our position and to fight against this humungo government coming our way. He came across as the guy you'd want to have your daughter bring home, but not the guy you'd want leading your company during tough times.
Well, damn. It may not have been the greatest speech ever, but SOTU responses almost never are. The delivery may occasionally have smacked of Mr. Rogers...but heck, people like Mr. Rogers, don't they?
Besides, there was plenty of the standard GOP boilerplate to please the faithful - plenty of the same lower-taxes, government-is-death, screw-the-volcanoes the Republican loyalists usually eat up.
Jindal's speech wasn't very good, but very few politicians, even those heralded as rising stars, have done a bang-up job with the SOTU response during recent years, even with George W. Bush to play off. Tim Kaine didn't, Kathleen Sebelius didn't, Gary Locke didn't...and that didn't seem to damage their futures especially badly.
So why are conservatives tearing their hair out about a mediocre turn from the Next Great Brown Hope?
The answer, in all likelihood, lies in the fact that Jindal's address wasn't supposed to be a generic SOTU response, just as Jindal wasn't supposed to be a generic prominent Republican.
Now that Republicans are backed up on their heels, they're looking for something more than a spokesman. They need a Messiah.
Their last party icon, Obama's predecessor in the White House, proved so disastrous a leader that eight years of his stewardship gifted the House, Senate and White House to the opposing party. Their collection of presidential candidates last fall proved to be one of the most incompetent groups of stumble bums ever lampooned on a national stage, and the current nominal leader of the party became a national punchline within weeks of her public ascension.
In Bobby Jindal, Republicans see a way out of this mess - a young, highly intelligent, ethnically charged archconservative, just the figure to reinvent the party and sell it anew to an America grown sick of it.
They have virtually no other options besides Bobby. He's the best coming star they've got, the only one with the requisite gravitas, intellectual firepower, and homespun conservatism, and most Republicans know it.
So when Jindal was selected to deliver the SOTU response, the GOP base was desperate for something more than a generic speech. They needed the coming-out party for the GOP's new savior, the anointing of Reagan 2.0, a Republican Obama who could go toe-to-toe with the Democrats' inspiring new leader - and win.
Instead, they got Mr. Rogers. From their best guy.
That's the frustration for Republicans today. Bobby Jindal was auditioning for the leadership of the party yesterday, and practically every conservative in America wanted him to step up and claim the Reagan mantle (whatever that really means).
In that context, good enough is not enough. And Bobby Jindal was not enough.