Gov. Bobby Jindal can't seem to catch a break. Since his disastrous rebuttal to Obama's speech, the mockery has been hard and fierce. One of the somewhat under-reported stories in the MSM (except by KO) is his Katrina anecdote.
Of course, his delivery was roundly mocked, but what about the actual story. TPM dug into it quite well:
But there are several pieces of evidence that suggest this just didn't happen. Nothing, to be sure, that definitively proves the story was made up. But more than enough to declare it highly suspicious.
First, Jindal's story has Lee railing against the red-tape in the midst of the crisis. But Lee, the sheriff of Jefferson Parish in suburban New Orleans, told CNN he didn't find out about the license and registration issue until about seven days after the incident.
Here's Lee talking to Larry King (via Nexis) a week or so after Katrina:
I fully believe that when then matter is looked into, we tried to get some boats in the water early on. When I realized that we had a problem, I was the one that made the call in WWO (UNINTELLIGIBLE) radio if there was anybody with a boat to come to a place so that we can get the boats in the water because I was around when -- the other big hurricanes, and most of the rescue done early on were individual fisherman, recreational fisherman that had boats that went in the water. Those boats where not allowed to get into the water when they were needed and I just found out about seven days later one of the reason boats couldn't get in was they didn't have enough life preservers and some of them didn't have proof of insurance. And I'm sure that there's a FEMA regulation that says that. But when a storm of this magnitude hits, you through those regulations out the window and you do what you have to do and start saving lives. (our itals)
It's within the realm of possibility, just, that Lee and Jindal are talking about two separate incidents. But from the way the details line up, it's reasonable to assume they're the same.
There has also been some great work here on the Kos by xgz.
Now, Jindal is being forced to backtrack:
A spokeswoman for Bobby Jindal now says the Louisiana governor didn't intend to imply that an anecdote about battling bureaucrats "during Katrina" actually took place during the heat of the rescue effort or directly involved the governor, then a member of Congress.
The spokeswoman, Melissa Sellers, said the story Jindal told in his response to Obama actually took place some days later in Lee's office, as Lee was recounting his frustrations with the bureaucracy to someone else on the telephone.
[snip]
"It was days later," Sellers said. "Sheriff Lee was on the phone and the governor came down to visit him. It wasn't that they were standing right down there with the boats."
She said she thought Lee, who died in 2007, "was doing an interview" about the incident with the boats when the governor described him yelling into the phone.
Oops. Not only was Jindal big debut on the national stage a failure in terms of style and substance, much of it was just big fat exaggeration. Of course, Jindal couldn't be bothered to clarify this himself; he's apparently still on vacation (hiding). Better luck in 2028!
Update: Looks like Jindal's press operation isn't happy with how this is playing out (from the Politico piece):
Sellers insists that there is no difference between Jindal's account and the one she and Teepell told, and objects to my characterization of a difference in the immediacy of Jindal's story and the version that has him listening while Lee recounts something that has already happened.