Comparing Bobby Jindal And Harold Ford

By Kleinheider Posted on March 5, 2009 at 7:45 am

Jeff Feck sees similarity in Bobby Jindal’s widely panned response to Presidnt Obama’s address to Congress and Harold Ford, Jr.’s speech to the 2000 Democratic National Convention:

We forget it now, but Ford went into his 2000 keynote with the same kind of buzz that Barack Obama had in 2004. He was being touted as the future of the Democratic Party, a likely candidate for the presidency in 2008 or 2012 or so. He was only 30 at the time, but he’d been in the House for two terms already. Add to it the fact that he was African-American, and you had a potential future superstar.

But like most things the Democrats touched in 2000, Ford’s speech did not turn to gold, but rather a sort of silverish aluminum. It was a decent speech, but not transcendent, and certainly not equal to the hype it had received in the days leading up to the event. Ford’s aura was dented severely; by 2006, he was running for — and losing — the Tennessee Senate seat vacated by Bill Frist. Today, he’s mostly known among Democrats for being a Joe Lieberman type — reflexively anti-Democratic, and far too solicitous of Republicans. The idea of a President Harold Ford is ludicrous now — a sharp slide that began in the summer of 2000.

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Tags: Bobby Jindal, Harold Ford  

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