Pete Buttigieg is a man with a lot of “gold stars” on his résumé, but why should anybody actually trust him to be on their side? (Amusingly enough, in his campaign book Shortest Way Home, Buttigieg describes an incident in which a voter asked him how he could prove that he wasn’t just another self-serving politician. Buttigieg couldn’t come up with an answer.) The available evidence of his character is thin. Has he spent a lifetime sticking up for working people? No, he worked at McKinsey before he entered politics. Has he taken courageous moral stands? No: while Gary, Indiana declared itself a sanctuary city in response to Donald Trump’s immigration policies, Pete’s city of South Bend did not.
In fact, for progressives there are very concerning signs about Pete Buttigieg. After Israel massacred Palestinian protesters, Buttigieg appeared to pin the blame on Palestinians. He has professed himself “troubled” by the clemency Barack Obama granted to Chelsea Manning, even though Manning is a national hero who was tortured after blowing the whistle on US government crimes. He has called for “democratic capitalism,” the same phrase used by Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council in the 80s as a euphemism for corporate-friendly neoliberalism. When his words aren’t vacuous, they’re troubling.
Pete Buttigieg’s pitch embodies what Luke Savage has called the “West Wing view” of politics: the idea that the best candidates for high office are the “smart” ones who went to elite schools and have a wonkish command of the facts.
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