The state of Bobby Jindal

I know I'm not saying anything that hasn't already been said everywhere else, but nevertheless, a few thoughts:

• Barack Obama could probably read the D.C. phone book and I'd feel better about myself and my country. I'm glad he didn't, because there were some nice rhetorical flourishes in there—not just the part about how staying in school is an investment in America, but more particularly the times that he referred to the American public as "the people who sent us here". It's a nice reminder, to Congress but also to us, that these people are in Washington to represent us.
• Bobby Jindal. Wow. I'd never heard him speak before; I was mildly inclined to like him based on a profile a few years ago in the Brown Alumni Monthly. Halfway through his response, which I'm listening to now on c-span.org, I feel really condescended to. ("But Democratic leaders in Congress? They rejected this approach. Instead of trusting us to make decisions..." His tone makes it sound like he's explaining civics to a class of third graders.)
• "Wasteful spending". Like, oh, no, buying new cars for the government (heaven forbid we buy the product of a troubled major American industry!), and building a train "from Las Vegas to Disneyland" (yes, thank you for trivializing infrastructure), and "something called volcano monitoring" (got it, you don't know what it's for, and it sounds sciencey, so it must be something dumb, because why would we want to know when a volcano might erupt? Insert your own editorial cartoon here of Jindal wearing a toga and giving that speech in the forum of Pompeii). Won't they please just stop?
• Also, Rachel Maddow's reponse to Jindal invoking the reponse to Katrina is about right: "Um, ee-um, ahm, a, a ba ba ba ba ba".
• Maybe these responses always sound like this, but: Obama laid out policy goals and particular policies. Sure, Republicans might disagree with the policies, but Jindal isn't discussing the policies, he's going through this long spiel about how you should once again believe in the Republican Party, and how members of the Republican Party are willing to work for you, and we're restoring faith in the Republican^TM brand. For comparison: Obama mentioned the Democrats as a party exactly four times; three of them were in the phrase "Democrats and Republicans" and the fourth in the sentence "That is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue." That is to say, while there may have been a few nods to party divisions ("I know there are some in this chamber and watching at home who are skeptical of whether this plan will work..."), not once did he explicitly contrast the two parties; he never called on Republicans to do the right thing, or thanked the Democrats for their work in passing the stimulus bill, or anything else that would make "Believe in the Republicans" a sensible response.

Also, was this really more important than new episodes of Scrubs? Sheesh!