Here’s a fun fact: Every 10 seconds someone in America declares their candidacy for the Presidency. Right now America has more Presidential candidates than number of dinosaurs living in the Jurassic Park. Which is fitting because not only do almost all the candidates belong in a previous century, ideally they should be put inside a huge forest with an electrified fence around the whole area so that none of them can escape.


If you think that’s harsh, you should hear the biggest ideas mooted by various candidates from the Republican Party (and these are all real): reversing the Supreme Court ruling on gay rights, spending billions building a huge fence at the Mexican-American border even though the percentage of people crossing into America illegally from Mexico has decreased dramatically, taking away insurance from 30 million people by repealing Obama’s health care law, banning the weekend, eliminating income tax for billionaires, passing laws that make it difficult for minorities, college students and old people to cast their vote, bombing and invading more countries in the middle east and abolishing the education department.


Love you long time


Meanwhile, as America gears up to choose the next pawn-in-chief of the military-industrial complex, over here in India our political establishment and foreign policy mandarins were gearing up to start cranking up the "anonymous sources" wheel so that they could start telling anyone who would listen that they’re secretly rooting for the Republicans, because their conventional wisdom says that Republicans are good for India. In fact, our glib mandarins have spent the last six-and-a-half years missing their old friend George W. Bush. They really don’t like the current President. No matter what he does, they just don’t think his intentions are sincere. Obama could land in Pakistan, personally drone Nawaz Sharif, deport Musharraf to Guantanamo and punch a lifelike wax figurine of Jinnah in the face and still G Parthasarthy would go on teevee to loudly proclaim that, "George Bush would have brought the Quaid-e-Azam back to life and then killed him again.”


However, all is forgiven now and the Democrats are cool again because Hillary Clinton is now an official candidate for President! For our policy establishment, no other American politician comes even close to the real love of their life, the Clintons. They love the Clintons so much they keep adding terrible platters named after them to the menu at the ITC Bukhara. For the past decade and a half, they’ve stayed up many nights, scribbling Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea’s names in the last page of their journal, imagining what could have been if it wasn’t for those damn term limits.


But the real hilarity, as always, emanates from watching Indian news organisations cover the Presidential election. According to the Indian media, the only two responsibilities of the American Presidency are to (a) designate extremists groups in Pakistan as terrorist organisations and (b) issue H1B visas to Indian techies. The State Department only exists so that the Indian government has someone to officially complain to when a VIP gets frisked at an American airport. And the sole function of the CIA is to brainwash easily influenced Indian citizens against their own government.


Jindal all the way


Though, to be fair, this time they’re also going crazy over this elections’ remote Indian connection: Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. They cover him like he’s a major candidate with a lot of support, even though in reality he has as much a chance of becoming the President of the United States as LK Advani has of becoming the Prime Minister of India.


Bobby Jindal has the personality of a box of stale cereal and the wit and charm of a non-poppable strip of bubble wrap. He’s spent his whole life rejecting the country of his parents birth, yet our media wastes no time in claiming him as one of our own. And our social media pundits act like he’s insulted them personally whenever he says something xenophobic about India. Let’s be clear: no group of people have any claim on another person’s loyalty. Bobby Jindal doesn’t need to sing paeans to the country his parents left before he was born because NRIs or people living in India think he’s one of them.


Bobby Jindal is deserving of mockery and derision not because of his comical insistence on embracing principles entirely antithetical to his very existence; but because he insists that everyone else should also follow his lead. And because he uses the power of his elected office to force a lot of people to do so.


From his predictable outrage over the US Supreme Court’s decision on legalising gay marriage and his childish attempt at delaying the issue of marriage licenses to gay couples to his recent embrace of the Confederate flag-a symbol of a white supremacist state that believed in enslaving people of colour-as a part of his “heritage,” everything he does is based upon receiving validation from the very people who will always think that he’s trying a little too hard.


Bobby Jindal is an advocate of a monochromatic future where everyone is the same and any sign of difference is quashed before it even begins to show signs of existence. The curse of Bobby Jindal is that in his denial of agency to others, his bigotry towards those not bestowed with the same advantages as him, his barely masked disdain for anyone who dares to deviate from the norm and his refusal to accept reality makes him more Indian then he will ever realise.


However, in our persistence on focusing on Bobby Jindal, we have missed the real story of this election. There is a candidate whom we can claim to be “one of us.” A man who could run for any office in India and wouldn’t stand out. I’m talking about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. He’s the one we should be focusing all our attention on. Unlike Bobby Jindal, Chris Christie is running for election in the wrong country. If America doesn’t care for him-and the polls show it doesn’t-we can surely do him a solid favour and rehabilitate his sagging political career.


Chris Christie is a loudmouth megalomaniac masquerading as a strong leader who keeps creating new straw men so that he can win every imaginary fight with them. He’s a bully who doesn’t think twice about using the powers of his office to threaten or cajole his opponents into silence. He’s a snake oil salesman who’s great at pretending that doing the bidding of his billionaire friends is exactly what the economy needs.


 We always have room for one of those!