Last night’s speech was a disaster, and key shares plunged in response this morning, demonstrating that recent declines will prove difficult to reverse.

The speech in question, however, was Jindal’s and the shares in question were “Jindal stock” on the Intrade prediction market.

While Obama got a 17% bump in response to his speech, critics were less kind to Jindal, comparing him to Steve Urkel, Kenneth from 30 Rock, and Mr. Rogers. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and most other conservative commentators (1, 2, 3) panned his performance, leaving people wondering whether he has done serious harm to his chance of running for President some day:

“it’s difficult to imagine him now as Obama’s 2012 opponent. Jindal not only didn’t live up to his advance billing, he proved that he needs a lot more seasoning before he gets a prime time slot.” [link]

I agree that Jindal did poorly (who doesn’t?) but I’m not yet ready to say he has ruined his shot at becoming the GOP candidate. While Krauthammer compares Obama to Reagan as a communicator, it is easy to forget how much Obama stumbled in finding his voice even a few years ago, and how hard he had to work to find a style that worked well for him.

Jindal is young, and, as Abhi pointed out, has plenty of time ahead of him. Plus, the GOP field is so weak right now that it gives him time to grow and develop. Jindal may be down, but I wouldn’t count him out.

While they can fix Jindal’s delivery, it’s harder to fix the underlying problems that made his speech so weak.

The first is that Jindal is a wonk, plain and simple. To try to communicate to a broad audience, he gutted his speech of specifics and he talked down in a condescending fashion.

That’s one reason why he reminded people of Mr. Rogers, he came across as an intelligent man trying to speak in simple terms to a bunch of elementary schoolers. It was particularly glaring coming after Obama, and the audience resented it. I know Jindal is trying to play to the populist segment of his party, but he has to find a different way to do so otherwise he’ll end up like Mitt Romney.

(Such oversimplification also leaves him vulnerable to attack. Jindal said: “their legislation is larded with wasteful spending … [including] $140 million for something called “volcano monitoring.” Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C. ” [link] Opposing volcano monitoring is like opposing hurricane warning systems, it makes little sense, especially when the USGS is saying that their system may have saved the US military more than $200 million dollars in a single instance)

The second problem is that Jindal offered little new in his speech, he didn’t even try to spin Republican ideology in a different way so it felt new, and the audience wasn’t buying it.

“To come up in this moment in history with a stale, ‘Government is the problem, you can’t trust the federal government’ is just a disaster for the Republican Party,” Brooks said on PBS’ “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.” “It’s not where the country is, it’s not where the future of the country is.” [link]

At a time when Alan Greenspan is talking about bank nationalization, it’s hard to tell the American public that the answer is for the government to get out of the way.

I actually think the first problem will be harder to fix than the second. As time passes, people will become more receptive to the ideology that Jindal is putting forward, especially if he can make it sound different from what Bush offered. But he has to find a way to sound authentic without sounding geeky, and that’s a much more difficult challenge.

Text of Jindal’s speech, and video below: