Mary Tutwiler

Jindal tapped to "change the world"

by Mary Tutwiler

Gov. Bobby Jindal better get busy. With the highlights of the state’s budget featuring layoffs, reductions in services, and deficits, it’s hard to see how he will have time to live up to the latest anointment, this time by Brit publication New Statesman, who has named him among “10 people Who Could Change the World.”

The New Statesman calls Jindal the “saviour of the Republicans” and says he is “perhaps the best prospect for revitalizing a Republican Party that has just started its tour of the wilderness, with little else to keep it going other than the sustenance provided by occasional caribou kills by its new folk hero, Sarah Palin”.

Some of the other picks are Regina Papa, a social activist from India; Xian Zhang, a 35-year-old Chinese music conductor; Joshua Foer, a 25-year-old writer and U.S. "memory champion;" Mosiuoa Lekota, president of the Congress of the People, South Africa’s new opposition party; and James Thornton, chief executive of American charity ClientEarth that takes up legal battles to protect environment.

Why should we care? In the last list compiled by the New Statesman, in 2005, one of their 10 faces to watch was a little known senator from Illinois, named Barack Obama.