Power Elite: Rhodes Scholars With Enormous Influence
10. Bobby Jindal
Jindal applied and was accepted by both Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School, but studied at New College Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He later received an M.Litt. Degree in political science with an emphasis in health policy, in 1994. The subject of his thesis was “A needs-based approach to health care.”.
He turned down an offer to study for a PhD D.Phil. in politics; instead he joined the consulting firm for McKinsey & Company. He then interned at the office of Rep. Jim McCrery of Louisiana, where McCrery assigned him to work on healthcare policy. Jindal spent two weeks studying Medicare to compile an extensive report on possible solutions for the program’s to Medicare’s financial problems, which he presented to McCrery.
Jindal is a Louisiana’s Republican governor who has his eyes set on being an “ideas candidate” for the 2016 presidential election. He has announced a 26-page plan that would replace the current Affordable Care Act with his proposed 26-page plan. His philosophies strayed far from that of a constitutional conservative when he spewed missives at Sen. Rand Paul regarding for his comments on how the U.S’s involvement in Iraq helped to created ISIS, demonstrating Jindal’s representation of the hawkish wing of the republican party. He had initially supported the Common Core Education Standards, however, has since come out as a vocal advocate against them. He has also flip-flopped on NSA’s bulk data collection within two years, having criticized it, defending the unconstitutionality of it, to now defending it as a “tool” to “hunt down terrorists”.
