What does Kamala Harris see in the secretary of transportation?
There has been some criticism of Donald Trump’s selection of J. D. Vance as his running mate, much of it merited, some of it not. But whatever you think of Vance, the last person I want to hear from is Pete Buttigieg. The former mayor of Indiana’s fourth-largest city and a former Democratic presidential candidate, now the secretary of transportation, recently went on Real Time with Bill Maher and discussed Vance. Here’s what he had to say:
I knew a lot of people like him, when I got to Harvard. I found a lot of people like him who would say whatever they needed to get ahead. And five years ago, that seemed like being the anti-Trump Republican, so that’s what he was. He talked about how he [Trump] was unfit, how he was cynical, called him an opioid, which is kind of a weird thing to say about a person, but definitely . . . but I mean for somebody whose identity is that they’re connected to Appalachia, which has an opioid crisis, that really is the darkest thing you could possibly say about Donald Trump. At least in public. Behind the scenes, he was apparently actually calling him Hitler, right? Seriously! Five years later, the way he gets ahead is that he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Pass over the amusing reference to sliced bread. It was a smooth and polished presentation, likely delivered using skills Buttigieg honed during his time at McKinsey, the consulting firm that recently gave New York City the brilliant advice to use garbage cans. Reports, following yesterday’s Mark Kelly trial balloon, that Democratic vice-presidential speculation is returning to Ohio-bordering states strongly suggest that Buttigieg intended this appearance as an audition, or at least part of an extended job-application process.
It’s a job he would have no business holding. His political experience is almost audaciously limited, and it was even more so before he saw fit to run for president anyway with, at best, a mixed record of accomplishments as mayor of South Bend (an office he sought only after Indiana voters statewide rejected him). Even Biden agreed. A Biden ad against him during the 2020 Democratic primary put it this way: “Joe Biden helped save the auto industry, which helped revitalize the economy of the Midwest. Pete Buttigieg revitalized the sidewalks of downtown South Bend by laying out decorative brick.” Black voters had little time for him.
But the Biden gracious enough to forgive Kamala Harris’s criticism of his opposition to forced busing welcomed the dubiously qualified Buttigieg into his cabinet. Conservatives might think it unfair to attribute all things that go wrong to the incompetence or malice of the person in charge. The Left, however, does not believe that. So does Buttigieg deserve blame for the train of high-profile transportation-related mishaps that have occurred during his time at the Transportation Department? Does he deserve grief for taking an initially unannounced two months off in the midst of them? Whether the crises worsened in his absence, or whether his absence made no difference, it’s enough to conclude, as Matthew Continetti did last year, that he’s not ready for prime time.
Other Buttigieg faults arise independent of politics, though they are not separate from it. His ability to bluster his way into unearned positions seems to derive from a reputation for generalized technocratic competence of the sort the consulting firm McKinsey seeks out and develops in its employees. This has no doubt been helpful in his various pursuits. But the condescension inherent in such expert- and data-driven work can induce a callous arrogance in those who do it. They tend to see the world and its people as something for them to plan. You can see this in Buttigieg’s response to Senator Ted Cruz’s question about the workers who would lose their jobs with the cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline project: “The answer is we are very eager to see those workers continue to be employed in good-paying union jobs, even if they might be different ones.”
And you can see it in his assessment of J. D. Vance. The Maher interview revealed that Buttigieg sees at least some of himself in the Ohio senator. “We’re from the same generation, we’re both from the Midwest.” He might have applied to himself another observation he made about Vance: that he is someone “who would say whatever they needed to get ahead.” Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar saw through Buttigieg’s relentless, meritocratic striver façade, facetiously wishing during a 2020 Democratic presidential-primary debate, “I wish everyone was as perfect as you, Pete.”
Buttigieg is ambitious and vain but possessed of seemingly no inner core. He is a PowerPoint presentation turned human being, and he’s further proof that leftism fits quite well with McKinsey’s current form. He would bring nothing but a lean and hungry look to the Democratic presidential ticket. His flaws ought to be enough to make even the most Vance-skeptical on the right eager to see someone raised amid the chaos of the opioid epidemic go up against someone whose former employer helped worsen it.