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Notes -
I’m surprised at the controversy.
It seems like this was a tactical choice. I think this also reflects exactly in how I see Buttigieg, as the absolute stereotype of the political striver.
It’s clearly not a good choice to run a gay man in 2024, especially when the effective ad from Trump they keep talking about is “I’m with you, she’s with they/them”. Pete does not deserve the presidency for running through the gauntlet correctly. It’s not a crown. People actually have to vote for him.
Pete Buttigieg could have done Joe Rogan and come out looking good. He has real charisma and he is good at communicating his values.
People fixate on the they/them part of the ad, but the important pronoun is you. You don't get people to support you by convincing them that you deserve their vote, you get people to support you by convincing them that you support them. The message of the ad is this: 'Kamala Harris isn't for you, she's for minorities and Groups and special interests and the sacred cows of her weird San Francisco Progressive ideology. If you're just a regular person she doesn't give a crap about you.'
It landed because Kamala Harris is bad at acting like she cares about regular people. That's something Pete Buttigieg excels at. Obama had the same talent.
Before Obama won, lots of people said a black man couldn't be President. Now a bunch of people are saying a black woman can only be present if her running mate isn't gay. It feels like a god of the gaps fallacy to me. The better explanation is that charisma is real and more important than identity checkboxes.
I don't think I get that from either of them. Pete's always struck me as a soulless striver lizardman type. Like Beto, he can ape the motions, but he lacks the Trump/Bill Clinton knack for leaving the people he talks to with the impression that he's personally invested in them.
And Obama's utterly unique trait was the way people would project onto him whatever they wanted him to be. Even the man himself seemed bemused by the phenomenon. But even then, the projection wasn't "Obama cares about me personally", it was as a totem for All Good Progressive Things, but especially technocratic expertise elevated to a messianic level.
Pete did pretty decent at Surrounded even though that's not perfectly representative. The funny thing is, though, that his worst answers were always about something specific to Harris: 14:14, an undecided voter said that her debate performance was shit, and asked Pete about if her character is so good, why didn't it come through? 31:22ish, another one asked why Harris said something about censoring social media if it contained misinformation as an attack on free speech (although very, very interesting: Pete called the Trump TV license campaign trail threat out as not just a free speech threat but a real threat, not just a Trumpian bluff. This was 10 months ago; he was 100% correct). Still, Harris feels like a millstone around the campaign's neck in most of these questions, and that's not good considering she was the campaign.
And most painful, 37:17, a voter outright says it.
Damning. Pete responds with some (true) stuff about how, ok she's a sitting VP, she's paranoid about the media jumping on a gotcha line. Then he says, well, people have their strengths and weaknesses, and she'd be a good president - which is straight up conceding the point about her bad communication, if you look past the tact. But people can tell. That voter sure did. People just say these things, it's not like they hide it, the Harris campaign really should have known this was an issue. Anyways, I think Pete would do just fine on campaign if he's the one driving the bus, I think you're a little too down on the communication, even if it's not, admittedly, an effusive personal charm kind of thing. If there's one thing holding Pete back, it's probably that he feels the need to try and appease the Democrat sacred cow talking points at times, which would be less the case if you're behind the wheel.
So I shared many of your feelings about Buttigeig, and felt that he would have done well at the top of the Democrat ticket, and then I had to deal with his office and him professionally as the secretary of transportation, and now I have to disagree in the strongest possible terms. While he has charm and charisma, as a professional executive head of a functional body, dude is fucking incompetent. In my experience he was totally unable to make an independent decision without 17 layers of ass-covering consultation, totally unable to tell when brown-nosing subordinates might be completely full of shit, and worst from a political perspective, totally unaware of when optics might demand his presence or at least general visibilty, such as when a major transportation disaster has occured, and the Secretary of Transportation might plausibly be expected to have input.
If the DNC wants to lose badly in 2028, I can think of few better ways that having Buttigeig be the nominee.
If you don’t mind my asking, how/why did these interactions happen? How high up in the office were you dealing with, or did you literally deal with him personally? Had you dealt with other secretaries of transportation?
Well, without doxing myself too much, its mostly aerospace related matters, specifically involving certification of new aircraft, new rules for airports and air traffic controllers, and how the US would harmonize its regulations with other national and supranational regulators (like EASA... okay mostly EASA). The list of sins is long- it was never clear who was actually making a formal decision (lots of 'here's what i think, but xyz all need input'), despite a formal decision being requested. Some paperwork remained outstanding for 4 years. Certain statutory limits on how long the government has to respond to requests and filings were routinely ignored without apology or explanation, to the point we seriously considered suing the FAA and DoT. It also became obvious that several key administrators were completely AWOL and had delegated their entire function to assistants, and when this was brought up directly to him, we got an out of office (I believe it was his paternity leave stint, which is charming, but as a cabinet secretary the buck stops with you, respectfully you dont get to take months of paternity leave), our concerns about serious government malfeasance were never addressed in even a perfunctory manner.
My experience with the previous two secretaries of transportation, as well as the current one, are nothing at all like that. Night and day difference, and I know there are many other people in similar positions who have similar feelings.
I never met with him personally, but the issues i was involved with were the kind of things that would require his approval, or st least input, and that really never happened. In contrast, i have emailed Secretary Chao before and recieved a personal response about three hours later. Secretary Duffy appears to be much the same.
Completely forgot to respond to this— thanks for the informative reply. Sounds like you have an interesting job! The substantial difference with previous secretaries is definitely concerning, as is the general sense of dysfunction you’re describing. Maybe he was a good politician but a not-so-good administrator, appointed above his level of competence? I’ll certainly keep this in mind about him.
I think that would be a fair assessment. There is certainly a wide gap between being a fairly local politician and trying to run a campaign on a bigger stage, and then actually delivering once you've won the race. In many ways, the skills don't translate, and cabinet secretaries are one of the posts where it can be most obvious (not guaranteed though- regardless of how you feel about the moral and philosophical implications of her actions, it's hard to deny the Clinton got shit done as Sec State, Cruz seems to be doing similarly).
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