Jigsaw Politics

Landrieu, who overcame a Republican voting trend in Louisiana to win a third Senate term in 2008, continued: "He has since the legislative session has started, but you know, before that he was all over, everywhere, and our state ... just like every state, really needs a governor to stay focused. We've got a deficit; we have this oil and gas situation we got to deal with; our universities are in terrible shape right now, and he's recommending substantial cuts to our universities."

Finally, the roundhouse punch: "And spending a lot of time focused on his next office as opposed to focusing on the one he has, and I think that's unfortunate. I think people who get elected to office should serve in the position they were elected for, so I hope he will pass up any, you know, presidential run and give the people of Louisiana the four years -- full four years, he was elected for."

It isn't certain how much of a problem Louisiana Democrats could cause Jindal if he seeks a second term in the state's "off-year" 2011 election, which would conclude just weeks before the voting in the 2012 Republican campaign gets under way. Their ability to stage a comeback after years of reversals will be tested next year in their efforts to recruit a strong challenger to potentially vulnerable Republican Sen. David Vitter.

But Landrieu's salvo could at least be a shot across the bow that they are not planning to roll over and allow Jindal to win a landslide re-election victory that would burnish his reputation as a political powerhouse.

That would contrast with the soft touch that both parties gave some recent major presidential contenders. George W. Bush trounced a weak Democratic opponent in 1998 to win a second term as governor of Texas, setting him up for his 2000 White House victory. John Kerry, Bush's Democratic challenger in 2004, didn't even draw a Republican opponent when Massachusetts re-elected him to the Senate in 2002.

And the top contenders in 2008, then-Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York on the Democratic side and Sen. John McCain of Arizona for the Republicans, all coasted to landslide wins in the statewide elections that preceded their presidential runs.