We'll begin this Louisiana blog with, appropriately enough, the resuscitation of a dead story. On Monday, Republican Bobby Jindal was inaugurated as the 51st governor of the state of Louisiana, the first nonwhite governor since Reconstruction, and the youngest sitting governor in the United States. All of that is, of course, nice enough. The real deal here is how everybody is talking like it's the Second Coming. Think of it as Obamamania except replace "He's got charisma!" with

"All cabinet and other officials appointed by the governor and departmental officers as provided in R.S. 36:5 shall participate in annual training and education on the Code of Governmental Ethics beginning in 2008.  The ethics education shall be in conformity with the provisions of R.S. 42:1170 except for the commencement of such training."<

; He's got ethics reform!  Get ready to swoon, lock up your daughters pursuant to LA CCRP 894.1, Sec. B, etc., etc.

Indeed, much of the Jindal love in Louisiana comes because of his status as a policy wunderkind - a status so firmly entrenched that the only real line of attack used against him in the 2007 campaign was that he was too smart. Granted, these ads emerged from the campaign of newly-minted Democrat Walter Boasso, whose primary platform was, and I'm paraphrasing here, "I am bigger than my opponents." Nevertheless, Jindal won outright in Louisiana's unique open primary system with 54% of the vote.

While it seems like the virtually the whole state outside of the orbit of New Orleans is entranced by the shiny new governor, leave it to embittered, urbanite bloggers to voice their extremely measured skepticism. My own dramatically informal survey has shown that cautious optimism and cockeyed doubt appear in approximately equal doses, with the latter beginning to rise relative to interviewee's use of "Piyush", which is Jindal's given name. It's all very biblical in its own charming way.

Soon enough we'll be out in the field to tell you all about what kinds of things people are <i>actually</i> saying in the physical world, as opposed to the luminiferous aether, which, as we all know, permeates all space. That, of course, will require leaving Orleans Isle and, more specifically, this room, which we shall call LA Choose or Lose Blog HQ for our current purposes. And with Mardi Gras so quickly approaching! In any event, whether or not Jindal's message of ethics reform and transparent governance will be more interesting than unchecked debauchery or proper lawn maintenance remains to be seen, but rest assured that we'll be traveling across the state and talking to young voters, young non-voters, young vaguely-aware-of-things people, and people who once-were-in-the-target