Most observers and voters will probably agree that Joe Biden, the former vice-president (under President Barack Obama), is a man of the past. But is Pete Buttigieg (*1982) the future?
In the Democratic presidential debate in New Hampshire on February 7, 2020 Pete Buttigieg destroyed Joe Biden’s experience narrative in less than a minute.
Here what Joe Biden said: The politics of the past I think were not all that bad. I wrote the Violence Against Women Act. I managed the $900 billion Recovery Act, which in fact put millions and millions of dollars into his city before he came and helped save his city. I was able to do it, I was able to pass the chemical weapons ban, arms control. And I was the first major leader holding public office to call for same sex marriage. So I don’t know what about the past of Barack Obama and Joe Biden was so bad. …
Shortly afterwards, Pete Buttigieg destroyed Joe Biden’s narrative, without denying Biden’s past successes: Those achievements were phenomenally important, because they met the moment, but now we have to meet this moment. And this moment is different. The next president is going to face challenges from global health security, like what we’re seeing coming out of China, to cybersecurity, and election security challenges that were barely thought of a few years ago. And here at home, we’re seeing things like gig work, transform what it means to be a worker in America, in ways that were barely conceived of not that long ago. We cannot solve the problems before us by looking back. We have to be ready to turn the page, and change our politics before it’s too late. And I’m seeing everywhere I go, not just fellow Democrats, but a striking number of independents, and, what I like to call future former Republicans ready to join in that historic American majority to turn the page.
Does this make Pete Buttigieg the man of the future, the best possible next US president? Does it make sense to go from mayor of South Bend (from January 2012 to January 2020), Indiana, with some 101,000 inhabitants directly to the job of president of the United States, responsible for some 330 million US Americans? Not really.
Pete Buttigieg has a great résumé and seems to be a brilliant guy, but he should first get some more executive experience on a higher level. Why not as a member of President Michael Bloomberg’s government?
Eleanor Randolph: The Many Lives of Michael Bloomberg. Simon & Schuster, September 2019, 480 pages. Order the Kindle eBook from Amazon.com. Order the hardcover edition from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr.
The photograph shows Pete Buttigieg speaking at the 2019 California Democratic Party State Convention in San Francisco, CA. June 1, 2019. Photo copyright: Gage Skidmore. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pete_Buttigieg_by_Gage_Skidmore.jpg and https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/albums/72157708916999272
Article added on February 9, 2020 at 20:34 German time.
