Remember back in 2004 when that relatively unknown Senator from Illinois gave that magnificent Keynote Address at the Democratic National Convention and totally stole the show?

Even though he was not running for the nomination that year and the possibility of an African American president still seemed hard to imagine, it felt as though the Democratic Party had just found its answer to George W. Bush Reality-Lite politics.

It was clear we were witnessing a man who would change history — a new breed of politician equal parts Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. with a message of hope and the promise to challenge the status quo.

Five years later, after President Obama’s brilliant state-of-the-nation address on Tuesday, the Republican Party attempted to create some of that magic for themselves when they unveiled their latest answer to Obama: Bobby Jindal.

The 37-year-old Governor of Louisiana is a rising star in the Republican Party. Ultra-conservative political commentator Rush Limbaugh has even been billing him as the “next Ronald Reagan.”

However, after Jindal’s performance was near-universally panned by Democrats and Republicans alike, I think it is safe to write off Bobby Jindal as yet another Zune for the Republican Party.

Trying to describe just how thoroughly Jindal bombed on Tuesday is difficult because every mistake he made was amplified by the fact he seems to have gone to the Ned Flanders School of Oratory, but I will do my best.

His first mistake was to patronize his audience with statements such as: “The way to lead is […] not just to put more money and power in the hands of Washington politicians. The way to lead is by empowering you, the American people, because we believe that Americans can do anything.”

Really? Anything? Even elect Obama because your party’s way of leading led the world into an economic crisis?

If there is any lesson the Republicans should have learned from Obama’s success, it is that the American public is hungry for honest, nuanced evaluations of issues rather than the gross generalizations Republican politicians have dished out over the past eight years.

Jindal’s second mistake was to invoke Bush’s inadequate response to Katrina to express his doubt in Obama’s plan for government intervention in the economic crisis.

For a man whose goal is to redeem the Republican Party, it seems counterintuitive, to say the least, to remind the public exactly why they are dissatisfied with the GOP in the first place.

His third and most amusing mistake was to criticize Obama’s economic plan for “needless spending” on volcano monitoring.

Yes, the governor of a state routinely ravaged by hurricanes thinks monitoring natural disasters is wasteful. You can’t make this stuff up.

The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart responded by asking, “Who cares about lava? That’s like a levee overtopping — it’ll never happen.”

Stephen Colbert added that “monitoring volcanoes totally ruins the surprise.”

Is this guy really the GOP’s calculated response to President Obama? Or did he just forget to end his set with “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”?

If Bobby Jindal is really the GOP’s best answer, they must be asking the wrong question.

Last week Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele awkwardly proposed a “hip-hop makeover” of the GOP. Is Jindal just another part of this thinly veiled and poorly executed attempt to pass off an inherently un-cool party as being (to borrow Steele’s expression) “off the hook”?

I’m well aware that desperate times call for desperate measures, but right now the Republicans look just plain desperate.

Now that Obama is the politician by which all others will be judged, authenticity and originality will be the most desired traits for any potential world leaders, and the Republican Party’s latest repackaging of the same politician with the same ideas is further proof that the Republican Party just doesn’t get it.

One of Obama’s greatest strengths is that he is running a bipartisan platform — he is going to great lengths to find consensus in places where his predecessors long ago gave up looking.

Instead of realizing the importance of putting aside petty party squabbling during an economic crisis, all Jindal could do in his rebuttal was trivialize Obama’s message for selfishly partisan reasons.

So it looks as if it’s back to the drawing board for the boys over at GOP headquarters as they file Jindal next to Palin under “Fail” and pray for a new Republican messiah to materialize in time for the next election.

But if Bobby Jindal isn’t that messiah, who is? What if he is the most exciting alternative to Obama that the party has to offer? Will we see a push for a Jindal nomination in four years?

I sure hope so. That way we can all look forward to a bizzaro-world rendition of the Obama/Clinton showdown starring Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin in 2012. Or better yet, maybe Palin and Jindal can join forces with conservative advocates Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh to form some sort of Republican Voltron for an epic last stand against President Obama.

Of course Republican Voltron will lose, but if Jindal is the best answer the Republicans have for Obama, then the party isn’t long for this world anyway, and they may as well go out with a bang.