If Ambinder is right, the talk of a McCain VP selection this week is a diversion to try to drum up some positive coverage.  However, it cannot be encouraging for admirers of Jindal and proponents of rational decision-making in the McCain campaign (ha!) that McCain is headed to Louisiana to meet with Jindal.  Rod’s reasonable VP speculation based on these reports may unfortunately be all too accurate.  As I have said several times before, selecting Jindal would be a grave mistake for McCain and it would be bad news for Jindal, Louisiana and the Republican Party.  It would be the Republicans’ political equivalent of eating their seed corn.  Bobby Jindal will do a lot of people an enormous service, not least to the people who voted for him, if he turns down any McCain offer he may receive. 

Quin Hillyer is correct in his new article on this subject that Jindal should be towards the bottom of a long list of possible nominees, and his reasoning also makes sense:

But fergoshsakes, the guy really does need some seasoning. He has never stayed in any one job long enough — much less an elective political post — to be required to fight off a backlash by bad-ol’-boys who have had time to re-mobilize against him. And he still comes across, in a way Barack Obama doesn’t, as really young. Finally, the national press will be chomping at the bit to turn a few quirks from his admirable social conservatism into something that comes across as a little too extreme and weird.

There is also the added factor that having an extremely young running mate for the oldest nominee for President is likely to go down poorly with those reasonably concerned about the VP being able to act as a competent successor immediately.  For that reason, having a VP nominee with more executive experience than Jindal has seems to me to be imperative, so I think Pawlenty makes much more sense at this point.

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