Is Mayor Pete Setting Off Alarm Bells For You Yet?

One thing Pete's got is the killer p.r. consultant, Lis Smith 

If you've never heard me railing about identity politics, you're probably just discovering DWT. If I were running for office I would tell people to vote for me because I support the Green New Deal, Medicare-For-All, a livable minimum wage, fair taxation, the re-institution of free state colleges and universities... and other policies aimed to reduce extreme income inequality. Or I could appeal to voters by saying "I'm gay" or "I'm Jewish" or-- if I were a Republican-- "I'm a white middle-aged male."That would be identity politics. Which I absolutely hate. People should be elected based on-- what did Chris Hayes say again?-- who they'll fight for, what they'll fight for and on who can be trusted. "Everything else is noise."

Is Mayor Pete's campaign for the presidency just noise-- more identity politics gaslighting? Christina Cauterucci addressed it over the weekend for Slate: Is Pete Buttigieg Just Another White Male Candidate, or Does His Gayness Count as Diversity? Pete's the newest Democratic political celebrity-- out of the blue and currently polling, on at least one serious poll, better than anyone other than Bernie and Biden in Iowa... leading Elizabeth Warren, Kamala, Booker, Beto, let alone one-percenters like Gillibrand, Klobuchar, Frackenlooper, Inslee, Castro. Cauterucci channeled some of them: "[W]ith momentum comes backlash, currently in the form of frustration that the well-qualified female and black candidates in the race are getting shoved aside for another white guy. When, for instance, economist Alan Cole tweeted on Sunday that Buttigieg 'seems head-and-shoulders smarter than the other candidates running,' a characteristic response, this one from writer Jill Filipovic, was: 'Warren, who taught at Harvard, was one of the most well-regarded law professors in the country and one of the most intelligent people to serve in the senate, but we don’t politically reward, let alone even identify, that kind of fierce intelligence in women.' But Buttigieg faces his own structural disadvantages in the race. 'Buttigieg is the first gay candidate in history,' film journalist Mark Harris tweeted on Monday. 'So no, you don’t get to use him, of all candidates, as the 'typical white guy the media always falls for. He doesn’t deserve a free ride, but let me assure you: Gay people in America aren’t given free rides.' These aren’t just random tweets; the conversation is at the heart of a broader debate on the left about identity and representation."

She asks if Mayor Pete is "a run-of-the-mill white male candidate, or does his sexuality set him apart?" Me, I'd love to see a gay president-- if he's the best candidate. Otherwise... not. Getting into an arguement over which marginalized identities are more or less marginalized, is precisely what Hayes meant when he said "Everything else is noise." Furthermore, Cauterucci, an out lesbian, happens to see Mayor Pete as "someone whose affiliation with the gay community only goes so far as his own gay relationships, who can seemingly only conceive of homosexuality as a value-neutral or negative-- certainly not positive-- aside in a person’s biography." She sees his reluctantly shared gayness-- big closet case for much of his life-- as an "ultimately unimportant distinction-- 'like having brown hair,' his coming-out essay said.

But even as invalidating Mayor Pete's claim to an identity politics badge, Cauterucci seems to be a big fan of identity politics herself-- but for women, people of colors and, perhaps, LGBTQ-centric candidates-- so, sorry to say, just more noise. In the essay about Mayor Pete we're going to look at below, the author mentions that "Part of this emphasis on background and credentials is a kind of 'demographic politics,' by which the demographic boxes a person checks are taken as indicative of their political potential. This is how Tim Kaine was selected as Hillary Clinton’s Vice Presidential candidate: He was from Virginia, went to Harvard, spoke Spanish, played the blues. Swing state appeal, competence, cosmopolitianism, 'cool dad' factor: a perfect mix. Pete Buttigieg is trying the same thing. Look at the number of boxes he checks. He’s from the Rust Belt so he’s authentic, but he went to Harvard so he’s not a rube, but he’s from a small city so he’s relatable, but he’s gay so he’s got coastal appeal, but he’s a veteran so his sexuality won’t alienate rural people. This is literally the level of political thinking that is involved in the hype around Buttigieg... Buttigieg himself is quite explicit about pitching himself this way. Asked about why anyone should vote for him over other candidates, he did not cite a superior governing agenda. Instead he said: 'You have a handful of candidates from the middle of the country, but very few of them are young. You have a handful of young candidates, but very few of them are executives. We have a handful of executives but none of them are veterans, and so it’s a question of: What alignment of attributes do you want to have?'"

A couple of days ago, I read the definitional essay about Mayor Pete by Nathan Robinson in Current Affairs, All About Pete. He's not at all convinced and, in the subtitle, warns his readers to "only accept politicians who have proved they actually care about people other than themselves…" I don't get the idea that Robinson is an identity politics kind of guy. Still introducing his essay, he wrote that "If you know only one thing about Pete Buttigieg, it’s that he’s The Small-Town Mayor Who Is Making A Splash. If you know half a dozen things about Pete Buttigieg, it’s that he’s also young, gay, a Rhodes Scholar, an Arabic-speaking polyglot, and an Afghanistan veteran. If you know anything more than that about Pete Buttigieg, you probably live in South Bend, Indiana. This is a little strange: These are all facts about him, but they don’t tell us much about what he believes or what he advocates. The nationwide attention to Buttigieg seems more to be due to 'the fact that he is a highly-credentialed Rust Belt mayor' rather than 'what he has actually said and done.' He’s a gay millennial from Indiana, yes. But should he be President of the United States? When he is asked about what his actual policies are, Buttigieg has often been evasive. He has mentioned getting rid of the electoral college and expanding the Supreme Court, but his speech is often abstract." Later in his essay he mentions that "A labor organizer friend of mine has a test he uses for politicians: When they talk, is it all about themselves, or all about the causes they care about? Do they talk incessantly about their Journey and their Homespun Values, or do they talk about people’s needs, the power structure, and how to build a more just world? Pete’s book is, for the most part, all about Pete. That’s not what you want."



In the Vice video interview above, the reporter seems eager to get a specific policy agenda out of Mayor Pete. Mayor Pete's not playing along. "Part of where the left and the center-left have gone wrong," he tells the reporter, "is that we’ve been so policy-led that we haven’t been as philosophical. We like to think of ourselves as the intellectual ones. But the truth is that the right has done a better job, in my lifetime, of connecting up its philosophy and its values to its politics. Right now I think we need to articulate the values, lay out our philosophical commitments and then develop policies off of that. And I’m working very hard not to put the cart before the horse."

Robinson doesn't like the way that smells. "This is extremely fishy. First, while there’s a valid argument that 'technocratic liberal wonkery' disconnected from values is uninspiring and useless, the left is not usually accused of being too specific on policy. Quite the opposite: The common critique is that behind the mushy values talk there are too few substantive solutions to social problems. Why does Buttigieg think telling people your values and coming up with plans are mutually exclusive? Why does he think having a platform means you believe you’ve got it 'all figured out on Day 1'? Why treat policy advocates as 'dishonest'? Why mention the extremely low bar of being 'more policy-oriented than the current president?' And what use are values statements if you don’t tell people what the values mean for action? I’ve seen plenty of progressive policy agendas that don’t sacrifice values (e.g., Abdul El-Sayed’s plans, the U.K. Labour Party’s 2017 manifesto). A candidate who replies to this question with this answer should set off alarm bells." In explaining Mayor Pete's book, he notes that "Here is one thing I keep noticing about Pete Buttigieg: When asked why he wants to hold an office, he talks much more about who he is than what he will do... I do not see anything suggesting Pete Buttigieg is an organizer, activist, or really a left-winger of any kind... Buttigieg is one of those people who thinks Republicans are good folks whose values you can respect, even if you differ with them."

Robinson recommends that anyone considering supporting Buttigieg read his new campaign book, Shortest Way Home: One Mayor’s Challenge and a Model for America’s Future, "from from cover to cover. It is very personal, very well-written, and lays out a narrative that makes Buttigieg seem a natural and qualified candidate for the presidency." That said, Robinson wants to make sure his readers know his biases before he gives this his analysis of Mayor Pete's book. "I don’t trust former McKinsey consultants. I don’t trust military intelligence officers. And I don’t trust the type of people likely to appear on '40 under 40' lists, the valedictorian-to-Harvard-to-Rhodes-Scholarship types who populate the American elite. I don’t trust people who get flattering reams of newspaper profiles and are pitched as the Next Big Thing That You Must Pay Attention To, and I don’t trust wunderkinds who become successful too early. Why? Because I am somewhat cynical about the United States meritocracy. Few people amass these kind of  résumés if they are the type to openly challenge authority. Noam Chomsky says that the factors predicting success in our 'meritocracy' are a 'combination of greed, cynicism, obsequiousness and subordination, lack of curiosity and independence of mind, [and] self-serving disregard for others.' So when journalists see 'Harvard' and think “impressive,' I see it and think 'uh-oh'... I have lots of friends who are the products of elite institutions, but became critical of those institutions after being exposed to their inner workings. If Pete Buttigieg is one of those, great! Pete Buttigieg is not one of those... Calculated folksiness runs through the whole book... He doesn’t mention seeing injustice [in Cambridge]... Talking about politics on campus, Buttigieg says:

  In April 2001, a student group called the Progressive Student Labor Movement took over the offices of the university’s president, demanding a living wage for Harvard janitors and food workers. That spring, a daily diversion on the way to class was to see which national figure-- Cornel West or Ted Kennedy one day, John Kerry or Robert Reich another-- had turned up in the Yard to encourage the protesters.

Striding past the protesters and the politicians addressing them, on my way to a “Pizza and Politics” session with a journalist like Matt Bai or a governor like Howard Dean, I did not guess that the students poised to have the greatest near-term impact were not the social justice warriors at the protests […] but a few mostly apolitical geeks who were quietly at work in Kirkland House [Zuckerberg et al.]

I find this short passage very weird. See the way Buttigieg thinks here. He dismisses student labor activists with the right-wing pejorative “social justice warriors.” But more importantly, to this day it hasn’t even entered his mind that he could have joined the PSLM in the fight for a living wage. Activists are an alien species, one he “strides past” to go to “Pizza & Politics” sessions with governors and New York Times journalists. He didn’t consider, and still hasn’t considered, the moral quandary that should come with being a student at an elite school that doesn’t pay its janitors a living wage. (In fact, years later Harvard was still refusing to pay its workers decently.)

If you come out of Harvard without noticing that it’s a deeply troubling place, you’re oblivious. It is an inequality factory, a place that trains the world’s A-students to rule over and ignore the working class. And yet, nowhere does Buttigieg seem to have even questioned the social role of an institution like Harvard. He tells us about his professors, his thesis on Graham Greene. He talks about how how interesting it is that Facebook was in its infancy while he was there. But what about all the privilege? Even Ross Douthat finds the school’s ruling class elitism disturbing! Buttigieg thought the place fitted him nicely.

...Buttigieg’s thesis [on war] was in part about Vietnam, which he calls a “doomed errand into the jungle.” The liberal vocabulary on wars like Vietnam and Iraq should trouble us. It says things like “doomed” and “mistaken,” (“a lethal blunder” that “collapsed into chaos,” to quote Buttigieg) its judgments pragmatic rather than moral. In doing so, it fails to reckon with the full scale of the atrocities brought about by U.S. government policy.

It also treats America as an innocent blundering giant with “the best of intentions.” Buttigieg quotes Graham Greene: “Innocence is like a dumb leper that has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.” This is the Ken Burns line: We mean so well but we make terrible mistakes. It excludes the possibility that American leaders know full well what they are doing but simply do not care about the lives of non-Americans. And, in fact, it implicitly accepts the devaluation of non-American lives. Discussing the dissolution of Iraq into “chaos” (note: a word that obscures culpability), Buttigieg writes of “a reality on the ground that could no longer be denied amid rising American body count.” The Iraqi body count (over 500,000) is unmentioned, just as he leaves out the Vietnamese body count (in the millions). The phrase “reality on the ground” is used without any discussion of what that reality was for those who actually lived on the ground.

...If you are Pete Buttigieg, at this point in your life [a graduate of Harvard and Oxford] you have the ability to take almost any job you want. These schools open doors, and you pick which one you go through. (Ask yourself: If I could do anything I wanted for a living, what would I do?) Pete Buttigieg looked inside himself and decided he belonged at… the world’s most sinister and amoral management consulting company.

McKinsey is in the news almost every week for some new horrendous deed, from advising Purdue Pharma on how to “turbocharge” OxyContin sales to counseling dictators worldwide on how to build more efficient autocracies.

...Pete Buttigieg does not recall his time at McKinsey with a sense of moral ambivalence. Today he says it might have been his most “intellectually informing experience,” and by that he doesn’t mean that he saw the dark underbelly of American business. No, he was “learning about the nature of data.” It was a thoroughly neutral experience, “a place to learn.” The most critical thing he will say is that he was “sympathetic” to those who think consulting careers less worthy than “public service.” But ultimately, Buttigieg only left McKinsey because it “could not furnish that deep level of purpose that I craved.” His sense of purpose. Have a look at the book: See if you can find a single qualm, even a moment’s interrogation of the nature of the company he worked for.

In fact, Buttigieg was asked in an interview what he thought of the company’s misdeeds. On the work pushing OxyContin, he replied that he “hadn’t followed the story.” On collaborating with the murderous Saudi government:

I think you have a lot of smart, well-intentioned people who sometimes view the world in a very innocent way. I wrote my thesis on Graham Greene, who said that innocence is like a dumb leper that has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

The dumb leper again! Man, Buttigieg never misses a chance to cite that thesis. Vietnam was poor innocent America wandering the earth and accidentally causing a million deaths. McKinsey consultants are poor, innocent, leprous invalids, too sweet and unworldly to notice that their client is Mohammed bin Salman.

...Here’s another remarkable thing you’ll notice throughout Shortest Way Home: When Pete Buttigieg reports having meetings with people, it’s usually party bosses and advisers rather than ordinary voters, around whom he often seems uncomfortable. In a city that is ¼ Black, the most visible encounter he has with a Black constituent is an extremely telling one:

A big man who was also a deacon at Mount Carmel, the fastest-growing black church in town, he leaned back in his seat and shifted between knowing glances at his fellow firefighters and piercing stares at us. He seemed interested but skeptical. ‘I like what I’m seeing, and I like what you’re saying. But how do I know you’re not just another sweet-talking devil trying to get my pants off?’

It was hard to think of a good answer to that, so I kept on with the pitch. ‘I don’t know about that, but you’ll be able to hold me accountable for what we achieve from day one…’ You could never be sure, but I felt our case was convincing…

The fireman gets it: Pete is a skilled rhetorician trying to get people’s pants off. How do you know the fireman is right? Because Pete can’t even think of an answer to this extremely simple question. If someone asks you “How do I know you’re not just some bullshitter?” and you’re not just some bullshitter, you can say “Because I have done X, Y, and Z. I have shown that I’m a person of my word. I have clear plans, and I can tell you why they’ll work, how they’ll help you, and exactly what I’m going to do to make sure they come about.” If, on the other hand, you are just some bullshitter, and your entire life experience up to this point has been going to Harvard and working for one of the world’s worst companies, you will flounder. You have no plans, no ideas, you have no record of good deeds and community service. He’s got you figured, and all you can do is “keep on with your pitch” and stammer the word “accountability.”

One thing I find remarkable is that when Buttigieg listens to other people, he’s not actually listening to them. Check out this little gem from when he’s figuring out if he can run:

I sat listening to anyone who would give me time-- the redevelopment commission [first on the list, of course], the head of the local community foundation, the most respected black pastors on the West Side-- to see what they thought of the city’s future, and to gauge what they might think of me.

Okay, true, he wants to know “what they thought of the city’s future” in addition to their thoughts on him, but note what he’s not asking them: What do you need from a mayor? What should a mayor do and can I figure out how to do it? He listens to gauge whether he should run, not to find out what community concerns were. Lest you think I’m being unfair to the passage, read the book: Try to find out what those Black pastors’ political priorities were. Try to determine what the Black fireman wanted from a mayor. Pete wasn’t curious enough to find out, so you won’t either.

  ...As mayor, he says, he was “tech-oriented.” He was “fresh from a job in management consulting and eager to unlock whatever efficiencies could be found.” He wanted to “follow the data where it leads.” What does that mean? Buttigieg cites “app for pothole detection” and his “smart sewers” that used wi-fi-enabled sensors to more efficiently control wastewater flow. He was even willing to “follow the data” toward layoffs. He found that it would save money to put robotic arms on city garbage trucks and fire human trash collectors. Buttigieg was “prepared to eliminate the jobs,” in part because the robots “led to lower injury rates” (fewer injuries being the predictable consequence of fewer jobs). Buttigieg’s ruthlessly quantitative approach to municipal government leads an acquaintance to compare him to Robert McNamara, which leads to another musing on the folly of well-intentioned planners.

...I didn’t realize the whole way through Shortest Way Home that South Bend actually has a serious poverty problem! Over ¼ of its residents are poor. It’s not just that Buttigieg is interested in hooking the sewers up to wi-fi. (I’m a “sewer socialist,” I like progressive wastewater management.) It’s that he spends zero time in the book discussing the economic struggles of the residents of his city!

Did you know there’s a giant racial wealth gap in South Bend? You won’t if all you read about South Bend is Shortest Way Home. Oh sure, he takes us on an ambling tour through the city, shows us people kayaking on the old industrial canal, wanders under the railroad bridge, takes us to see live music in an abandoned swimming pool. He tells us about twilight on the river, the fish-stealing heron on his running route (“To some he is a villain… but to me he is an elegant bird.”) But have a look at Prosperity Now’s “Racial Wealth Divide in South Bend” report and see if you think these should really be the mayor’s narrative priorities.

South Bend African Americans make ½ of what South Bend whites make. They’re twice as likely to be in liquid asset poverty as whites. Their unemployment rate is nearly twice as high... [T]he situation for Hispanic residents of South Bend is similarly disturbing.

What did Mayor Pete do about this? Well, to do something about it he might have had to care about it, and there’s no evidence from his book that he’s ever even thought about it. In fact, as I started reading about South Bend after getting through Shortest Way Home, there was a lot Buttigieg had left out. The eviction rate has been nearly three times the national average, a “crisis” among the worst in the country. If the word “eviction” appears in Buttigieg’s book, I did not notice it. The opiate crisis, homelessness, and gentrification are all serious issues in South Bend, but Buttigieg mentions them offhandedly if at all.

...Mayors can’t solve all problems. What’s disturbing about Buttigieg is that he doesn’t even seem very interested in the problems at all. Someone should ask him: Why does his book spend less time talking about poverty than about the time he played Rhapsody in Blue on the piano with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra? (“Technique sometimes took precedence over expressiveness” was the review of Buttigieg’s performance in the local paper, which sounds fitting.)

...[During his time at war in Afghanistan] "he did not apparently meet a single Afghan who he thought worthy of naming in his book, and the people of Kabul appear as anonymous pieces of scenery. (In this respect they are like the Black people of South Bend or the homeless people of Harvard Square: nameless nonentities whose opinions Buttigieg has never sought.)

Buttigieg spends a lot of his time in Afghanistan googling things and meditating on why soldiers must die in wars that are largely over. He doesn’t have any serious criticisms to make of the military itself, and one can see how he’s the type of person who would pronounce himself “troubled” by Barack Obama’s clemency for Chelsea Manning. (Remember that Manning publicly exposed U.S. war crimes, a misdeed for which she was imprisoned and tortured.) The scope of Buttigieg’s self-awareness can be seen from the fact that, in recalling his ambivalence about deployment, he quotes a friend quoting G.K. Chesterton to him: “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered.” A morally serious person would realize that one American person’s inconvenience/adventure is another non-American person’s incinerated wedding party. Considering Buttigieg’s stance on Israel, totally oblivious to the mass killings and the brutality of occupation, we might worry about his commitment to restraining militarism.

...In the last five minutes of his political life, Buttigieg has started making some radical noises, as is necessary to compete in a Sanders-dominated primary. Buttigieg is smart, and I think people should be warned: He’s probably going to say a lot of good stuff. He’s probably going to sign on to major left initiatives, or even try running to the left of Sanders somehow. (“You want to put two more justices on the Supreme Court? How about twelve?”) You’re going to nod, you’re going to cheer, you’re going to say “Wow, he’s really speaking our language.”

But here’s a fact about Pete Buttigieg: He picks up languages quickly. He already speaks seven of them, and you can find stories online of him dazzling people by dropping some Arabic or Norwegian on them. The lingo of Millennial Leftism will be a cinch for Pete. He will begin to use all the correct phrases, with perfect grammar. The question you should ask is: What language has he been speaking up until now?...

Mayor Pete is fresh, he’s untainted… He has an entirely different story than any other politician in our lifetime.” -- a wealthy Upper West Side Democrat, quoted in the New York Times

Mayor Pete does not have an entirely different story than any other politician in our lifetime. He has the same story they all have. David Axelrod has gushed: “His story is an incredible story.” Is it? The son of two professors at an elite university goes on to several different elite universities, serves an uneventful seven-month tour of duty in the Navy, and then becomes the technocratic mayor of the city his parents’ university is in? Ilhan Omar has an entirely different story than any other politician. So does Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This man is the story of the American elite.

The myth-making here is going to be intense. The profiles are already streaming forth. The New York Times covered his wedding by wondering if Buttigieg would be president. You will be sold Buttigieg’s small-town milliennial neoliberalism the way they’re trying to sell you Beto O’Rourke’s skateboard neoliberalism. Hey kids, you like Medicare For All? So does this guy! But he’s young and from the Midwest and likes Hamilton! Bernie is old. You don’t need an old man. You need young hip progressivism.

Do not be deceived by this. Look into the actual records of these candidates. Get their shitty books and scrutinize them closely. A lot of money is going to be flowing toward tricks like this, as frantic Democratic elites try to push someone like Buttigieg in order to prevent a Sanders nomination. They know Buttigieg is one of them; they see “McKinsey” and realize they’ll come to no harm. But they hope you don’t see what they see. It has been the same over and over: Hey kids, Tom Perez isn’t any different from Keith Ellison! No need to do anything rash now! At every turn, bandwagon-hopping frauds are going to mouth the latest slogans. Abolish ICE? Yeah dude! I’ll abolish the fuck out of ICE.

...Demand the evidence. Examine the record. We have got to learn to see through this stuff. You have to look at what they did and said before it was politically opportune to say what they’re saying now. Five minutes ago, Pete Buttigieg was “the management consultant making the South Bend sewers run on time.” Now he’s suddenly a radical who want to pack the Supreme Court. From Mitt Romney to Eugene Debs in a single news cycle.

A Plea for No More Petes

Why? Why have I spent so long talking about the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, an underdog candidate for the presidency? Why have I been so relentlessly negative? Because I see what this is, and I see how these things go, and we can’t afford to make this mistake again. No more Bright Young People with their beautiful families and flawless characters and elite educations and vacuous messages of uplift and togetherness. Give me fucked-up people with convictions and gusto. Give me real human beings, not CV-padding corporate zombies.

If we are lucky, Buttigieg Fever will dissipate quickly when people realize this guy is the same rancid wine in a new wifi-enabled bottle. “Hah, remember when Pete Buttigieg became a thing for a hot second?” It will be remembered as neoliberalism’s last gasp, a pitiful attempt at co-optation that was met with a unanimous reply of “Nice try.” Let’s hope to God that’s how this goes.

...Pete Buttigieg is all about Pete Buttigieg.