Opinion: No reply

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David Brooks, the refreshingly unpredictable conservative columnist for The New York Times, denounced as ‘nihilism’ Gov. Bobby Jindal’s televised reply to President Obama’s faux State of the Union address. I’m not sure I’d go that far, but the Louisiana governor’s speech -- an echo of Ronald Reagan’s assertion that government is the problem -- was lame and listless.

Yet even if it had packed a powerful partisan punch, it was an inappropriate use of airtime. The tradition of an ‘official’ reply to presidential speeches is overdue for interment.

First, there is no symmetry between a speech by the one and only president of the United States and a single member of Congress, let alone a governor who under federalism principles (presumably shared by Jindal) has slight standing in debates over national legislation. Second, the tit-for-tat format assumes that a presidential address involves preaching only to the choir. But most presidents would insist that their message is targeted more broadly. The idea that such speeches are strictly partisan is especially bizarre in connection with Obama, who has emphasized cross-party consensus.

The official reply is also a relic of television’s Dark Ages. As was not the case when there were only three TV networks, there will be no shortage of talking heads trashing the president’s speech. When CNN repackages Republican and Democratic operatives as ‘commentators,’ no president’s speech will escape nitpicking. So who needs Bobby Jindal?

(As an aside -- my colleague Jon Healey wonders what the GOP was thinking when it picked the governor of Louisiana to criticize Washington for spending heavily to rescue a sinking economy. Without tens of billions of dollars from the federal taxpayers, New Orleans might still be under water. Does this mean Jindal will oppose the state’s congressional delegation when it seeks billions more to improve the levee system?)

Obama is the president. What he says is uniquely newsworthy. If Republicans have trouble accepting that reality, they should (in the words of Justice Antonin Scalia) get over it -- and stop demanding even unequal time.

Photo on left: President Barack Obama. Credit: Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty Images. Photo on right: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. Credit: AP Photo