"Competent," considering the prior qualifications and record of the current occupant, would be anyone who could run a small business successfully enough to retain emplyees. (Sarc.)
Romney needs to blunt the left’s meme of “the white-bread GOP trying to unseat the historic 1st black president.”
I doubt there is much more Romney can do to pick up minority votes. But, there were plenty of moderate/swing-voters that voted for Obama simply out of “white guilt” and wanted to see the 1st black president so we could put some of our racial past behind us.
The Democrats will try and play on that white guilt again. “Don’t kick out the 1st black president, and replace him with a white guy; think of how it will set back racial progress.” Putting a minority on the ticket (like Jindal) will blunt that meme as the GOP will be able to argue that we got past the racial stuff in 2008, and now we’ve moved to the point where we can vote based on “a person’s character, not their skin color.”