Rethinking Mayor Pete Buttigieg 24 hours after my fawning post

Damn, I just learned how to say his name and yesterday wrote a fawning post about him, Pete Buttigieg, comparing him to his fellow shiny object, Beto O'Rourke. I even compared his emergence and ascent to Barack Obama's candidacy, smugly remembering how I predicted, from Day One that Obama would be President. And I thought here could be Obama 2.0. Then I remembered how I lost faith in Obama, after two years of happily volunteering, the day he was inaugurated and wrote extensively about him in this blog about what a disappointment he was and why. I, and millions of idolizers, failed to see beyond his message of Hope, to see that he was not a progressive, that his lack of experience did make a difference. Ok, I adore Obama, the person, just not the politician.

And along comes Pete! The embodiment of everything trump is not. We are so desperate for someone who can read, articulate an idea in full sentences, has a calming presence, is steady. Pete's all that...and I fell for it. Again. Here's why I've gone sour. I read an in-depth analysis, in fact you could call it a hit piece, on Current Affairs, All About Pete. It could be considered a little over-the-top as I'm sure Pete does have some depth but this is the part that got my attention...after you read it, I'll tell you why:

"But there was soon something even more disquieting. 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."

You see, my son, Benjamin McKean was one of the leaders of the PSLM, Progressive Student Labor Movement, that was sitting-in the President's office to demand a living wage for Harvard workers. It was an extraordinary protest that went on for three weeks and would have been incredibly hard to walk by that, if true, Pete did. It kind of made me sick and mad and made me see him in an entirely different light. Here's how the protest went down:

From A Brief History of the Living Wage Debate at Harvard
April - May 2001

Nearly fifty students occupy Massachusetts Hall, which houses the office of the President and other university administrators, in protest of Harvard's poverty wages and the administration's refusal to consider the living wage issue any further. During the three-week sit-in, the campaign organizes daily pickets and rallies drawing up to 2000 people, collects 400 faculty signatures in support of a living wage, gains the endorsement of four U.S. Senators, and draws sustained attention from the national media. Every night nearly a hundred people sleep in dozens of tents pitched in Harvard Yard outside of Mass Hall. Hundreds of campus workers mobilize to demand justice from Harvard and support the sitters-in. Over a hundred Harvard alumni/ae stage a mock sit-in at the Harvard Club of New York in solidarity with the protestors in Cambridge. 

May 2001

After three weeks, 25 students leave Mass Hall with an agreement from the university to create a committee (known as the Katz Committee) with faculty, administrators, students, and workers, charged with studying Harvard's labor policies and recommending changes by December 2001; to announce a moratorium on outsourcing until the committee's deliberations are complete; and to renegotiate a contract with the janitors' union in early 2002.

Undergraduates who participated in the sit-in are put on disciplinary probation. Students at the law school are given official reprimands.

Dining hall workers settle a contract with Harvard, raising the pay of all but a dozen workers to above the Cambridge living wage level.

If he's the candidate, I'll vote for him. But now I eye him with skepticism. GO BERNIE!

We're going to be talking about him anyway during this primary, so here's a helpful pronunciation guide: Buddha-judge, Boot-a-judge, Boo-tuh-judge, boot-edge-edge
You're welcome.























Here's a guide if you're still interested; Buddha-judge, Boot-a-judge, Boo-tuh-judge, boot-edge-edge

Head to head. Who will it be? Mayor Pete Buttigieg or Beto O'Rourke. Joe who?

POW! My guess is Beto doesn't know what hit him. Where did this dark horse come from that came galloping and jumping to the top of the candidate heap? OUT OF THE HEARTLAND People! A precious trophy for Presidential candidates and he came with more than the sparkle of a shiny object. Mayor Pete Buttigieg came with gravitas.

Beto O'Rourke was interviewed for an hour on David Axelrod's The Axe Files and I'm not sure if he said anything substantive, just the regular soup to nuts progressive talking points. He did talk about his bad boy background which I didn't know about but it did nothing to elevate him (who doesn't love a bad boy?) to someone I want to donate my hard-earned shekels to. Give him props for shaking up the Texas Senate race with an awesome ground campaign, making personal contact with thousands of voters, waking them from their somnambulism to get out and vote for chrissake and he almost made it but, as in all races, there's only one #1. His near win and the adulation of the campaign flipped his ego into overdrive and he thought he was Presidential material. Millions of people gave a whopping $80M to that race but, to me, it was more of an endorsement of the progressive message delivered by an attractive candidate. 

Then, a super smart, honest-to-god everyman comes along and talks like a regular person...albeit a brilliant one...looks you in the eye and also talks progressive values. Straight as they come, but gay, Pete Buttigieg has a solid resumé of accomplishments as mayor of South Bend. In his announcement, the message is that it's time for his generation to take over, it's time for a bright new day, "Today is the first day of a new era." Hear, Hear! The significance of the pictures of Pete and his husband, Chasten, embracing on stage, walking hand-in-hand down the steps of the stage cannot be overstated. It made me and millions of people so happy. And delighted to think of how Conservatives are throwing up right now.

As many of you know, my first love is Bernie and had Mayor Pete not shown up, he would have gotten my full attention. But I can love two people at the same time, right? Does that make us a threesome? Interestingly, in high school, Pete won the first prize for the JFK Profiles in Courage Essay Contest awarded by the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston. Guess what he wrote about? Pete wrote about the integrity and political courage demonstrated by U.S. Congressman Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Imagine that. And here they are both running for President. Would love to hear their thoughts about this.

Neither Beto nor Mayor Pete have run for national office, a killer experience if there ever was one. There will be many tests, mishaps, mis-spokes, stumbles along the way...not just for them but for every one of the candidates, as there always is. Beto, who is full of boiling energy, makes me a little nervous, like I just want to hold him down for a second, to chillax. Pete couldn't be more opposite, calm, serious, thoughtful but not boring. There's enough crap roiling our nervous systems everyday that I welcome his assuring presence. There's that gravitas again. 

Pete Buttigieg is the real thing. You know, I just reminded myself that I said the same thing about Barack Obama when he surprisingly showed up as a contender. And, we got the first black President. Now we have the first Monster President (I did not predict that.) Mayor Pete will be the first gay President. Bernie will be the first Jewish President. Why can't they be co-Presidents...you know, switch every year while the other one recharges?

Here's an apt reminder for those candidates whose deluded ambitions will eventually come smack up against the reality of the winnowing process - this tagline (thanks to Next Top Model): "One Day You're In & the Next Day You're Out'" Better have a Plan B.