I liked the old Bobby Jindal better -- the one whose brain moves so fast, he's already indexing questions his interviewers haven't thought of yet.
What did they do with him? 
The Jindal who responded to Barack Obama's address to Congress was less the brilliant statesman than a terribly mixed metaphor -- equal parts Mister Rogers, Bobby Brady and Kenneth the Page.
I know Bobby Jindal, and that guy wasn't Bobby Jindal.
The real Jindal is the intellectual equivalent of a nuclear power plant. The real Jindal has actually read the stimulus bill and can recite its contents. The real Jindal is the sort of politician who promises ethics and education reform, and actually delivers.
Stories of Jindal's ability to quickly assess a problem and fix it have become the stuff of legend in Louisiana, as when he was assigned the task of reforming the state's Medicaid program and presented a workable plan the following morning. He was in his 20s.
That kind of performance, followed by his bare-hands approach to Hurricane Katrina rescue efforts as a Louisiana congressman, helped him become the nation's youngest governor in 2007. What happened to that guy? Who snatched his body?
His staff did.
In fact, Jindal did not write his own speech and he's on a choke collar by some well-meaning people who helped him win the governor's race. What worked in Louisiana in 2007 may not work on the national stage in 2016, when Jindal is most likely to run for president.
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