Pete Who?

Adapted from the Twitter feed, January 26 and 29, 2019. Posted Friday, February 8, 2019.

Thirty-six year old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana and recently announced candidate for the Democratic nomination for President, Pete Buttigieg on the campaign trail. AP Photo by Nam Y. Huh, via the Atlantic.

Hello. He’s Pete Buttigieg. He’s running for President:

A normal politician might be miffed at the low turnout. A regular human being might not be looking quite so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed under the circumstances. But “normal” and “regular” are not adjectives that apply to the son of a Maltese immigrant father and an Army brat mom who grew up in decaying South Bend, got himself into Harvard, summer-interned for Ted Kennedy, worked for John Kerry’s presidential campaign, won a Rhodes Scholarship, learned Arabic in Tunisia, landed a jet-setting consultant’s job, left it to return to his beat-up hometown and become the youngest mayor of a midsize U.S. city, transformed that city into a national model of renewal, and then — deep breath — volunteered for active duty in Afghanistan while serving as mayor, came out as gay in the local newspaper, married a schoolteacher live on YouTube, turned heads in a dark-horse bid to lead the Democratic National Committee, and had the New York Times’s Frank Bruni gushing about him as potentially the “First Gay President”— all by age 36.---from the Washington Post Magazine, January 14, 2019.

Paragraph leaves a couple things out. He was his high school class president and valedictorian and he graduated from Harvard magna cum laude. But still. Quite the resume. Harvard grad. Rhodes scholar. Naval intelligence officer. Management consultant. Mayor. Paragraph leaves a couple things out.

Reminds me of someone. Let me think who.

I got it. Annapolis grad. Naval submarine officer. Engineer. Businessman. Peanut farmer. Governor…

I wonder how many voters Pete Buttigieg’s age got the reference in this post’s title and guessed it wasn’t meant as an impertinent question but a cheering of Buttigieg on?

For that matter, I wonder how many voters my age remember when that question when it was current?

Probably some old timers do.

I know one who would have.

Pop Mannion.

Pop was probably one of the first who heard it asked dismissively and laughed knowingly back in the day. Pop spotted Carter early, when he really was Jimmy Who? And he liked him and signed on, becoming the county chair for Carter’s election campaign. He headed the district’s slate of Carter delegates in the primary. In those days here in New York you voted for the delegates not the candidate. Pop’s slate lost to an “uncommitted” slate put up by the Albany Machine, but he and Mom Mannion were still invited to the inauguration.

Like I’ve said before, at this point speculation about the presidential election is still just fantasy football. It looks to me like it’ll be Kamala. The wind is at her back. Booker, Gillibrand would be all right with me too, but I’m not feeling it. By rights, Brown ought to be my guy, but, frankly, he puts me to sleep. Warren, Bernie, Biden? I don’t think the Democratic base is looking for a white Northeastern senior citizen to be its standard bearer. I don’t think Biden’s even going to run. I think he’s just indulging an old man’s vanity by imagining running out loud. Nope. I’m going with Kamala, for now. The fact that California’s moved its primary to March seems to seal it to me. My guess is it’ll be all over but the shouting come Super Tuesday. But like I would know.

I like what I’ve read about Buttirieg, although pretty much all I’ve read is this article in the Post Magazine, although I’m not smitten with the article’s theme, which the headline encapsulates: “Could Pete Buttigieg Become the First Millennial President?”

I've said before that I want no more Presidents older than me. I'm not sure I'm ready for one young enough to be my son though.

Seriously it's not his age or that he's gay that would worry me if he somehow emerged as our nominee. It's his last name. It's not exactly resonant. I think he'd have to run as just Pete.

Worked for Jimmy.

Here's the part of the Post article that resonated with me…

Buttigieg announced his 2011 campaign two weeks after Newsweek featured South Bend as one of “America’s Dying Cities.” People had been promised a return of manufacturing jobs for almost half a century, Buttigieg says — “a little like Trump in coal country.” …

From 1902 to 1963, the city was the home of carmaker Studebaker, which employed nearly 25,000 local workers at its peak, before going belly-up. The city never recovered. ..

When he was growing up, “a lot of people would still talk about the closure like it happened yesterday,” he says. “When I ran, we had to paint a picture of the future that did not translate into nostalgia.

That describes Schenectady, New York when I was growing up in the suburb next door. A city paralyzed by a collective nostalgia for an industrial past that elected officials, developers, planners, entrepreneurs, and other wishful-thinkers were continually trying to revive with one futile scheme after another to attract manufacturers to town.

Took a lot of people all across the country a lot of time to change that and get the collective thinking turned toward the future and away from the past. One of those people lived in our house when I was growing up.

Pete Who really does remind me of Jimmy Who in mostly good ways. But know who else he reminds me of?

Pop Mannion.

High school class president and valedictorian. Magna cum laureate graduate of RPI. Air Force officer. Physicist. Computer Scientist. University professor. Director of the computer center. Niskayuna Town Supervisor. All by the age of 37.

I wonder what Pop would have thought of Buttigieg. I wonder what he’d be thinking about 2020. That’s another of those conversations we would have gotten around to having if he was still alive. I keep looking over the field and eyeing the potential front runners and I can’t pick out one he’d have been excited about. But then he’d gotten pretty grumpy about politics the last few years. It was probably a combination of old age and incipient illness, but I blamed television. He had started watching too many bobblehead shows. I’m convinced that getting your political news from the bobbleheads makes you crazy with rage, even from Rachel. I don’t watch any myself, which is why I’m the cheerful old codger whose upbeat and sunny posts you come here to read and have brighten your day.

Pop liked Obama, of course, but his admiration always seemed to me to be somewhat dispassionate and abstract, and he’d come around to Hillary, slowly, a bit grudgingly, when it was clear O’Malley wasn’t going anywhere, but even after he’d come around  he was still hoping someone he could stand up and cheer for would pop up. He didn’t like Bernie because Bernie reminded him of the chronic complainers who showed up at town board meetings with a list of things that needed to be fixed but with no practical suggestions for fixing any of them. The last presidential candidate he was enthusiastic about was Howard Dean. with whom he shared a number of affinities, starting with their both being men of a scientific bent---Pop as a physicist, Dean as a doctor---who found in politics another sphere in which to exercise their talent for problem-solving.

But Pop came into the world the year Franklin Roosevelt was elected president, and in his heart FDR was always his president. His later heroes were Jack and Bobby. It was hard for anyone else to measure up.

He did like McGovern. He really liked Mario Cuomo and was disappointed when he decided not to run in 1984 and was disappointed again in 1988 and again in 1992, although he took right away to Bill Clinton, someone else he spotted long before just about anyone else. He liked Joe Biden too, but never hoped to see him run again after ‘88. And, like I mentioned above, he liked Carter, with whom, like Dean, he shared affinities. So maybe he’d have like Buttigieg. He might have seen his young self reflected in him.

Then again, I’m not sure he’d have been all that impressed. He might even have thought Buttigieg is getting too far ahead of himself.

There’s something presumptuous about the mayor of a smallish and not particularly important city in the not particularly important state of Indiana running for President of the United States. South Bend is the fourth largest city in Indiana, a state whose main reason for being, even in the minds of most Hoosiers, is basketball, while South Bend is there to be home to Notre Dame football.

He also sounds a touch arrogant. Well, they all do. Can’t be helped, considering campaigning for any political office requires months and even years of sustained bragging. It’s impossible to tell from the context of this quote Buttigieg’s tone here, but he doesn’t sound exactly humble…

"At the end of the day, I have more years of government experience than the President of the United States, I have more executive experience than the Vice President, and I have more military experience than the two of them put together."

This is true, and as a dig at the cowardly braggart Trump and the sanctimonious hypocrite Mike Pence it’s more than apt. But at the same time, it’s not much to write home about, let alone base a candidacy for President on. And it’s another way he reminds me of Carter, but in this case not favorably for either man. Buttigeig is described as soft-spoken and mild-mannered yet compelling and persuasive when speaking from the stump, working a room, and talking with voters one-on-one. That describes Carter on the campaign trail too. But Carter also had a knack for sounding charming when he was actually being cocky and, well, arrogant.

It is presumptuous of Buttigieg to run. It was presumptuous of Carter. It was presumptuous of a senator two years into his first term who’d previously held no office higher than state assembly and worked as a community activist and part-time law professor. It’s presumptuous of a current senator two years into her first term, even if she had been Attorney General for the largest state in the Union. It’s presumptuous of the mayor of San Antonio. It’s presumptuous of just about anyone who runs for the job.

Over at Lawyers, Guns & Money, vaccuumslayer had an amusing post with a serious point…

Yesterday I saw some people talking about how every person who runs for president should automatically be disqualified. It’s a popular sentiment that’s been around for a long time. And I hate it.

I hate it because it’s lazy thinking that doesn’t allow for nuance. Every person on the planet (except for Donald Trump, who is really just a sentient whoopee cushion) contains multitudes. People are complex and flawed.

It’s true that no one who runs for president is going to suffer from low self-esteem. But that’s a probably a good thing. There’s a reason I’m not running and it’s not just because I would be criminally unqualified. People don’t want Neurotic Eeyore as a leader, and they shouldn’t!

I think the vast majority of people run for president because they want to help people, because they have an actual interest governing, they have a vision for the country they’d like to see enacted through policy. That doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy the considerable perks that come with the job, but, as I said, people contain multitudes.

I hate it too.

I’m not sure what vacuumslayer was reading that prompted her post. I’m guessing it had something to do with Howard Schultz, whose ambition isn’t what disqualifies him for president in my view. Nor is it his vanity. It’s his fatuous and completely self-serving thinking about what the job is, what it entails, how politics work, how the economy works, what he thinks needs doing, and how he’d go about doing it. There is no way to qualify for the job except by holding it and doing it well, but it’s a job for which no jackasses need apply and you can disqualify yourself by being one right out of the gate. But it didn’t have to be Schultz vacuumslayer was reading about or even a jackass. It could have been Buttigieg.

The sentiment that ambition is bad and a disqualification in itself goes way back. Way back. It was old before the Romans warned each other about it. That’s why Caesar turned down the crown when Antony offered it and why Brutus and Cassius didn’t believe he meant it and was just putting on a show. Caesar was putting on a show. He knew he needed to. It’s well borne out through history: When the job includes power, if you want the job, it’s a good bet you shouldn’t be trusted with the job. But it’s not a sure bet.

It depends on what you want to do with the power the job entrusts you with and how you’ll go about wielding it.

George Washington wanted to be President. Abe Lincoln wanted to be President. FDR wanted to be President. Barack Obama wanted to be President…

Hubert Humphrey. George McGovern. John Kerry. Hillary Clinton. They all wanted to be President.

Pop wanted to be President. At least he did when he was very young and thinking about a future in politics. How could he help it, his hero being FDR and all? He gave up that dream early when but he saw no path to the White House for himself. He did see a path for himself to becoming a member of Congress. And for one brief moment he even saw one to becoming governor. I was sixteen and was there when that moment struck, and, boy, did his eyes light up!

He never stopped imagining what he’d do if he was President. We all fall into this self-flattering mental trap. But with Pop the thinking was realistic and practical. He knew he could do it, if his destiny had been different.

He'd have been a good one---President, governor, or Congressman. But he had to settle for being town supervisor for eighteen years during which he did a lot of good and solved a lot of problems.

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To read the whole of Bob Moser’s profile of Buttigieg, follow the link to “Could Pete Buttigieg Become the First Millennial President?” at the Washington Post.