{"id":26792,"date":"2019-11-24T21:42:19","date_gmt":"2019-11-25T03:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=26792"},"modified":"2019-11-24T21:42:19","modified_gmt":"2019-11-25T03:42:19","slug":"presidential-campaign-2020-pete-buttigieg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2019\/11\/24\/presidential-campaign-2020-pete-buttigieg\/","title":{"rendered":"Presidential Campaign 2020: Pete Buttigieg"},"content":{"rendered":"

I haven’t pursued overviews of the various Democratic candidates unless something interesting comes up because most of them just aren’t going to get very far. But Molly Roberts in WaPo<\/strong><\/em> brought up some interesting notes<\/a> concerning candidate and the former Mayor of South Bend, Pete Buttigieg, so I thought I’d look at them in the context of Buttigieg being on top of the polls in Iowa these days.<\/p>\n

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The fresh-faced first major millennial candidate and his deep-pocketed campaign have recently gotten\u00a0a big bump<\/a>\u00a0in the polls. But there\u2019s one hang-up: Mayor Pete has an\u00a0easier time<\/a>\u00a0charming people\u00a0twice his 37 years of age<\/a>\u00a0than half of it. Gen Z has even started calling him\u00a0Mayo Pete<\/a>, and no one \u2014 no one \u2014 wants to be mayonnaise. …<\/p>\n

Buttigieg\u2019s campaign has had its hiccups in recent weeks, though many have been cause more for eye-rolling than for outrage \u2014 such as the photo posted on Instagram by husband Chasten of the mayor posing at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, captioned, \u201cThis guy.\u201d Worth more attention was the list his team promoted as an endorsement of his Frederick Douglass \u201cagenda for black America\u201d by more than 400 South Carolinians.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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The Intercept\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that more than 40 percent of these South Carolinians were, well, white. And some signees who actually are black didn\u2019t support Buttigieg, or even his plan, after all. The email seeking endorsements was \u201copt out,\u201d not opt in. To cap it off, a\u00a0photo<\/a> accompanying the plan on Buttigieg\u2019s website pictured not an African American woman and her son, but an African woman and her son. It was a stock picture taken in Kenya, cropped to remove the dirt ground. The campaign said it was the fault of a contractor. …<\/p>\n

Buttigieg is a smart guy who has amassed a series of genuinely impressive accolades. But he radiates leadership and qualification beyond his years because he has picked up all the right badges, according to the badge-awarding powers that be. And when your appeal rests, in part, on having garnered the highest honors from the most venerable institutions of tradition, it\u2019s hard to argue that you\u2019re an agent of transformation. Buttigieg claims he will deliver something different, but he got the country\u2019s ear in the first place through devotion to the same old, same old.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It simply may be that the younger generations, having observed the antics of the older politicos in their search for dominance in the political arena, have decided that a candidate that doesn’t engage in those antics will be a better leader. Someone who uses detested tactics may also have detested goals in mind.<\/p>\n

But when it comes to leadership, there must be a way for voters to decide if someone is a good leader or not. Roberts suggests that Buttigieg has climbed the same old ladder towards power, and while that has its downside, the upside is also there: academic achievement, if truly earned, suggests a perceptive mind; political posts at least give the hope of experience.<\/p>\n

Of course, the former mayor must also be judged on performance, and those points will be tossed around in the coming weeks by friend and foe like.<\/p>\n

But Buttigieg has already had a few missteps with regard to political tactics, and I didn’t quote all of them from the article. He may still end up the nominee on the strength of an older generation who still believes in public and military service, and votes in enough numbers to make that belief count. But in 2024 and beyond, the performance of candidates in the race, whether they fight fair or fight foul, may become as important as positions themselves. The era of Roger Stone and his nasty bag of tricks may be coming to a reluctant end as the Boomers lose their dominance of the political scene.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I haven’t pursued overviews of the various Democratic candidates unless something interesting comes up because most of them just aren’t going to get very far. But Molly Roberts in WaPo brought up some interesting notes concerning candidate and the former Mayor of South Bend, Pete Buttigieg, so I thought I’d \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26792"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26799,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26792\/revisions\/26799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}