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McCain Considers Indian-American Jindal

The U.K.’s Telegraph speculates that McCain’s consideration of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal as a running mate is at least in part aimed at countering the “diversity” argument for Barack Obama as the first African-American president. Jindal would be the first Asian-American on a presidential ticket, the Telegraph points out, although the British paper’s assertion that Jindal might have some effect on African-American support for Obama seems a stretch.

As World Politics Review contributor Turna Ray noted in February, however, a Jindal selection would no doubt please India. Ray noted then that the Times of India and other Indian papers had already latched on to talk of Jindal as a veep candidate. She also wrote that such a selection would have implications for U.S. foreign policy:

On the international stage, an Indian-American VP would certainly have implications for the U.S. role in maintaining the precarious relations between India and Pakistan, since both countries are highly sensitive to the slightest suggestion that the United States may be making more concessions to one country over the other. However, the fact that Jindal, the son of Punjabi-Indian immigrants, converted from Hinduism to Catholicism in college, could lend him a semblance of objectivity when managing Hindu-Muslim tensions.