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Bobby Jindal, the 37-year-old governor of Louisiana, seemed like a good choice to deliver the official Republican response to Pres. Barack Obama’s sorta State of the Union address. Last summer, the charismatic former congressman had been much buzzed about as the great hope of the GOP, touted as a potential running mate for its presidential candidate, Arizona senator John McCain. But on the eve of Mardi Gras, Jindal saw his remarks savaged by critics. And these attacks didn’t just spring from the lefties at MSNBC. Some conservative pundits and regular readers of “The Corner,” the water-cooler group blog we produce at National Review Online, expressed their disappointment as well.

It’s true that the brilliant, hardworking Jindal did not bring the impassioned verbiage and lofty rhetoric that seems to have so entranced the Democrats and much of the American public these days.

Jindal, who can give a good, substantive speech off the cuff, looked uncomfortable in front of a teleprompter, probably frustrated at the inadequacy of “responding” to a presidential address to Congress from the relatively modest confines of the governor’s mansion in Baton Rouge. A fiend for wonky detail, he was most likely also annoyed that he didn’t have the time to rebut the president’s arguments point by point.

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What Jindal ended up doing, however, was adequately delivering a speech about American exceptionalism and fiscal conservatism. However imperfect it may have been, it was, in many ways, a speech that should have been celebrated. At a time when the country’s corporations evince an overwhelming sense of entitlement to which Washington has been only too generous in catering, Jindal stood on principle, calling for a return to the hard work, self-sufficiency, and willingness to debate that make America great.

Jindal’s underwhelming enunciation of some fundamental principles came but days after the chattering classes on the Internet and talk radio, and even in the White House, went wild over CNBC’s Rick Santelli. Santelli had a furious Network moment on the floor of Chicago’s CME futures exchange one mid-February morning, raging against the irresponsible culture of bailout that’s made a home in a nation founded on self-reliance. His frustration resonated. Mere seconds after I posted the video of the scene on our website, I started receiving Santelli for President e-mails from readers.

Hours later, noticing the exponentially increasing enthusiasm for Santelli and his message, I had a moment of déjà vu. It took me back to just after Labor Day of last year. I was in the Twin Cities, yards away from the governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, as she delivered her vice-presidential acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. E-mails immediately began rolling in from people who said they wanted the ticket reversed — they liked something they saw and heard in her.

Even though most of us don’t watch CNBC and few of us knew much about the governor of Alaska before she stepped upon the national stage, the enthusiasm with which many Americans responded to Palin and Santelli was similar, and it showed a desire for leadership. In Santelli’s case, people responded to his anger and common sense. In Palin’s case, they reacted to her passion and folksiness.

Passion, of course, can only get you so far. And, frankly, the same goes for competence and smarts. Man cannot get elected on capability and intelligence alone; just ask Mitt Romney. Even as the country edged toward the brink of financial meltdown during last year’s Republican primaries, there was something about the fiscally savvy former governor of Massachusetts that did not compute with voters. Like Jindal facing an unfair playing field after the president’s speech, Romney had a lot of disadvantages that he just couldn’t overcome (including an opponent who played on religious bigotry against Romney, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). But, as with Jindal that night, there was something people needed to hear that he could not convey.

Jindal has a long, bright political future. Right now, he ought to focus on rebuilding and reforming the disaster-and-corruption-riddled state that he so loves. And he should fight his battles as he faces them — making clear, as he did on Meet the Press recently, that he’ll only take money from the federal government if it helps the residents of Louisiana, and refusing to create new, unsustainable bureaucratic entities. When he does that, and does it in his element, he sings. And it’s a song — of responsibility and principle and common sense — that we thrill to hear.

— Kathryn Jean Lopez is the editor of National Review Online.