I wanted to write about Bobby Jindal and 2012...

...but I guess I'm a little late. He's being talked about everywhere. You know, Indian-American, Catholic, age 37, Governor of Louisiana, graduated from Brown and turned down Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School to attend Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, worked briefly in the private sector before devoting himself to public service, and blah, blah, blah...the Republican Barack Obama! Put me on the Jindal bandwagon (everyone says he's brilliant) but I'll bet he waits until 2016. Remember, he's young, and I'm hoping Obama does so well that no one serious challenges him. It's my opinion that it was George H. W. Bush's sky-high approval ratings after the Gulf War that discouraged such Democratic luminaries as Mario Cuomo and Al Gore from making a run in 1992. This inadvertently opened the door for a southern governor by the name of Bill Clinton. I also believe Clinton began his race hoping to sow the seeds for a future run or be selected as someone else's running mate. But the field that year was weak, Bush's approval ratings collapsed with the economy, and Ross Perot siphoned off just enough votes from the Republican to throw the election to Clinton.

So if Bobby Jindal isn't the guy for 2012, who is? Let me play Great Mentioner for a moment and throw in four names (that have already been mentioned by others): Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana; Mike Pence, Congressman from Indiana and the thinking man's Evangelical; Paul Ryan, Congressman from Wisconsin; and Eric Cantor, Congressman from Virginia and the only Republican Jew from the lower house. They are all highly respected individuals.

As for Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and anyone else from the 2008 race, fuhgeddaboudit! They're all history.