Assessing Mayor Pete’s future in big-league politics
Believe it or not, we are all going to have to learn how to pronounce this guy’s last name. Pete Buttigieg (pronounced boot-edge-edge) is the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and he is running for president of the United States.
Normally if a man is leaving South Bend for Washington, D.C. it is to play for the Redskins. Surprisingly though, the mayor of the fourth biggest city in Indiana is making a splash in Democratic politics.
Looking at his resume now, it is clear why Buttigieg is a rising star. He left South Bend to attend Harvard University, and then the University of Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. He is also a veteran of the Naval Reserve who served in Afghanistan in 2014.
His biography is one of those meritocratic checklists fitting of a man with grand ambitions. He just has not quite reached the great heights he may have hoped for yet. His only attempt at state office as state treasurer of Indiana was a bad loss as was his attempt to head the Democratic National Committee in 2017.
Being the mayor of any city is an important job, but it is clear Buttigieg’s ambitions go beyond South Bend. One thing he will not be is governor. The state whose last governor was Mike Pence is unlikely to make a progressive Democrat their next one.
Buttigieg has seemed stuck, with his next logical steps blocked off by geography and demography. So why not skip a few steps and run for president? This may look like a delusion of grandeur, but so far, his results are impressive.
According to a Monmouth University poll published on April 11, Buttigieg is in third place for public approval in Iowa behind Sen. Bernie Sanders and former VP Joe Biden, with growing support among young voters. His appeal goes beyond his LinkedIn page.
He can ably articulate a progressive agenda, but he engages with people who disagree with him without alienating them. This strategy will be crucial with voters who do not like Donald Trump’s style of governance, but are not on board with everything Democrats are providing on the contrary.
One of the funnier interactions Buttigieg has had on the campaign trail thus far was his comments on Chick-fil-A, whose leadership is stridently against gay marriage and in the past has funded dangerous “conversion therapy” camps. He joked, “I do not approve of their politics, but I kind of approve of their chicken.” While funny, this line could just as easily come off as offensive. What helps is the hint of self-deprecation to the joke. After all, Buttigieg is gay and the first openly gay politician running for president.
In a presidential race where it is better to be a cold sore than President Trump, Buttigieg is relying on biography and personality to set himself apart. He is a polite, earnest, mild-mannered man from the Midwest. Trump is a loud, brash, arrogant man from Queens.
Trump is an older man whose “bone spurs” kept him out of Vietnam. Buttigieg is a young man who willingly served in the Middle East. Trump is a thrice married adulterer, Buttigieg married to a man he met on the app Hinge (very millennial). The dichotomies can go on all day, and that is something Buttigieg can capitalize on.
However, biography and personality cannot be all a presidential candidate has, and this is where Buttigieg falls into the familiar trappings.
A politics of mood is popular, and Trump connected with a certain mood more than he ever made substantive policy proposals.
It would be wrong to say Buttigieg is as weak on policy as Trump is. But while candidates like Elizabeth Warren are making policy the bedrock of their campaign, Buttigieg is not.
This lack of big-league experience will likely hold Buttigieg back, but this presidential campaign will be an undeniable step forward for him. He will not end up in the West Wing, but he will not end up back in South Bend either.
If an older or more coastal candidate ends up at the top of the ticket, Buttigieg will be on a vice-presidential shortlist. If not the vice-presidential slot, he would be in any Democratic cabinet or a frontrunner for 2024. There’s a lot to win in losing.
Second-tier presidential candidates come and go faster than we can remember them. In 2012 alone, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann and Pennsylvania’s own Rick Santorum all had their moment in the sun, but they never had staying power.
This Buttigieg boomlet suggests there is something more than a television contract with MSNBC. So remember, it is pronounced Boot-edge-edge, because there will come a time where he cannot just be called Mayor Pete.