There's shamelessness, and then politician shamelessness. 

There are a few varieties of politicians. There are the relatively smart con men, the clueless followers who barely attain midwit status, and the vanishingly few politicians who believe in things and mostly tell the truth as they see it. 

The first group amounts to about 10%, the middle about 80%, and if we are lucky, we get about 10% who are there to make America a better place. 

Pete Buttigieg definitely fits into that first group, which is basically con men. Adam Schiff and Dan Goldman are in the same category, although, frankly, they are much worse at conning anybody but the marks who want to believe what they are selling. 

Buttigieg is hardly as talented as, say, Obama, but he has a seemingly artless charm and wonkiness that appeals to "thoughtful" centrists who believe he really is a good-hearted man trying to accomplish good things. 

Uh, yeah. No. Buttigieg is hardly evil, but he is a grifter with a knack for sounding sincere as he relieves you of your cash. 

"...burdensome requirements for obtaining the funds, including climate change mandates, preferences for hiring union workers and...the employment of 'justice-impacted' people with criminal records to install broadband equipment."https://t.co/GAYO7LZWSG

— Kyle Martinsen (@KyleMartinsen_) May 7, 2025

I know plenty of people who see Pothole Pete as just the kind of technocrat the country needs. He's not a culture warrior, and he doesn't come off as an ideological zealot. He is NOT an ideological zealot. He is an ambitious guy with a talent for getting into positions of power and using that power to spread the cash around while accomplishing not one thing he promises. 

As Pete sets himself up for another run for the White House, he has to solve a few problems he faces. The biggest one being that he will be aiming to run in the "non-threatening competent technocrat" lane that appeals to a small slice of the Democrat Party, yet his record as Transportation Secretary is uniquely undistinguished. He had about as much positive impact as any Secretary of Housing and Urban Development ever has, which is to say not one little bit. 

Worse, his record is marked by numerous failures, which tarnish the brand quite a bit. He needs an explanation, and even better, will use his failures (as Democrats always do) as proof that you need even more Pete Buttigieg to solve the problems that he has discovered. 

Hence the "too many regulations" shtick. One could point out the obvious fact that Republicans have been arguing this for decades, and have endured nothing but ridicule from the Pete Buttigiegs of the world. 

But we all know that anything said by Republicans is de facto evil, and when they happen to be right, they only say those things to push an evil agenda. You need a Democrat to fix the problems that Democrats cause. 

And Pete Buttigieg certainly was one of the major authors of the problem he now decries. Much of the money authorized under the Inflation Reduction Act flowed through Mayor Pete's hands, so he helped craft the absurd regulations that tied up all that money and made it evaporate while accomplishing not a damn thing. 

If it is impossible to build anything in America, the fault lies almost entirely with the Democrats, who kinda like it that way. California's high-speed rail project is the ideal Democrat construction project--billions of dollars being tossed around, lots of makework jobs created, lawyers and lobbyists making bank, and all it requires to make it justified is building a foot or two of infrastructure a year. 

Not building things is better than building things, if you think like a Democrat. Much better.

1. The problem you are trying to "solve" never gets solved, so more money is needed. 
2. No silly expenditures on actually DOING things, so the money goes straight into the pockets of the preferred targets. 
3. The recipients of the money are incentivized to lobby for more and bigger projects. 
4. The longer things go, the more cushy and lucrative jobs are waiting for the politicians and regulators to land in. 
5. And a fraction of the money flows back into Democrat coffers, keeping the cycle going. 

The only thing Mayor Pete has built are the roadblocks he now decries. Removing those roadblocks will be his rallying cry to gain political support for his run for president. "Let's focus on building things" appeals to middle-class Democrats frustrated with the radical left and who want things just to work. 

It's a great grift, if you think about it. It has worked for Democrats for years. The "war on poverty" is a great example. It has been as successful as the war in Afghanistan, which similarly sucked up a trillion dollars and left behind a mess as bad as when it began. Combating urban decay? We build public housing, watch it deteriorate and become breeding grounds for crime, and then tear it down. 

Rinse, repeat. 

Mayor Pete's problem is that while the technocrats in the Democrat Party like his style of "governance," and did quite well under Biden, the appetite among Democrat voters for this style of politics is waning by the month. Democratic voters want anger and passion, and while an angry Democrat president will be happy to feed the pigs at the trough, the base will prefer an AOC-style president over a technocrat. 

Mayor Pete will have to content himself with a secondary gig.