Pete Buttigieg, the openly gay mayor of South Bend, Indiana, finds himself trying to navigate the historic nature of his candidacy, without it defining him.

In 2008, the anti-Marriage Equality measure dubbed Proposition 8 made its way to the polls as a referendum in California. The acrimony over their difference of opinions put Hillary Clinton and her camp at odds with Barack Obama’s in the midst of a heated primary campaign.

Clinton’s vote in favor of military intervention against Iraq following the terrorist attacks of 9/11 was an albatross that followed her through the duration of the 2008 campaign cycle. The war, now universally regarded as an unmitigated calamity, precipitated a chain reaction of instability in the Middle East that still shapes much of U.S. foreign policy. Despite this, back home, the Secretary of State couldn’t have better approval ratings. So when Clinton joined the Democratic opposition to the measure in the state, nearly the entirety of her primary campaign’s message in California was about her unequivocal support for Marriage Equality.

In stark contrast, Obama, who resonated with many voters over his opposition to the war and was far more attractive to true progressives, progressives who turned a blind eye to his silence on marriage equality. That’s because opposing the issue of marriage equality, was in 2007, of infinitesimal political consequence.

The times they are a changing

Now the only candidate who evokes the excitement and the kind of cross over appeal Obama engendered is openly gay, married, and is hewing closely to the blueprint Obama laid out; something that speaks to both men’s appeal, which has nothing and everything to do with race or sexuality.

Part of Buttigieg’s appeal, like Obama’s, is that he presents as a nerd.

Obama was our first nerd president, and Buttigieg may out Obama Obama in that department. Buttigieg even sounds like Obama. Not in the way that Trevor Noah, who does a masterful Obama impression, sounds like him. With Buttigieg you get the sense that he’s immersed himself, method-like, in the role. It’s especially evident in his Obama-esque calm and Vulcan-like inability to be shaken or respond emotionally to vitriolic and homophobic attacks. It’s also evident in his flawlessly executed retorts. It’s in the way he can elucidate complicated issues while simultaneously dismantling and unpacking intentionally obfuscated legal language .

It’s Buttigieg’s brain that is at the heart of his mass appeal among a populace of closeted sapiosexuals.

Mayor Pete gets us going, not because he’s gay, but because he read the book and studied for the test while we were getting stoned in our neighbors’s basement. And Buttigieg is not ashamed of his wonkish tendencies. His memoir, Shortest Way Home, presents a compelling narrative for his executive competence, devoid of any emotional entanglements.

When Barack Obama announced his candidacy for the presidency in 2007 it engendered overwhelming zeal from all members of the population to get out, volunteer, and get him elected. A zeal not seen in years. Since I was living in Los Angeles in 2007, I decided to join the Obama campaign as the Hollywood Precinct captain.

I had already decided a few months earlier that I would throw in with Obama after Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy. A student of history, it occurred to me that if Clinton won in 2008, the United States would have been under the leadership of two families for nearly 30 years: the Bushes and the Clintons. It was on the surface of things a sure sign of the decline of empire to see dynastic politics front and center like that.

Obama initially caught my eye when I saw him deliver the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004. That night, prior to John Kerry accepting the nomination, Obama gave his “One America” speech which propelled him into the national spotlight and would mark the start of a through line to his two term presidency.

This was despite the fact that Obama, the newly minted senator from Illinois, who had many things: charm, intellect, and that je ne sais quoi degree of acumen we recognize in great leaders, even had a compelling narrative that was a New York Times best selling memoir, Dreams of my Father, but he possessed virtually no voting record.

Like Obama, Mayor Pete has a knack for taking incredibly complicated policy issues and social issues and making people have “a ha” moments after hearing them. Just ask David Axelrod. Axelrod, who helped mold Obama for national office, hasn’t been so effusive about a candidate since he met a young Obama. And one wonders if Axelrod (and Obama) are playing a larger, silent role in Buttigieg’s circle of counsel. You hear echoes of Axelrod/Obama in the language Buttigieg used when he acknowledged that he understands the historic nature of his candidacy. His demeanor even appears to take cues from Obama.

When asked by The Advocate, “Like Obama, you’re an incredibly symbolic candidate. Is there anything from the Obama playbook that you’re stealing?” Mayor Pete responded:

I think he was somebody who understood the historic nature of his candidacy and also found a way not to let that completely define him, and I think about that a lot.

 

I know it means a lot, as the first out queer person to get this far in this process. I also know that it’s important because I think what success looks like is that it would not be newsworthy. I think it’s important to run our own playbook, that’s not as The Queer Candidate, but just as a good candidate who happens to be queer.

 

And finding ways to neither shrink from nor depend on that or any other element to my identity, I think, is something that he did very well, and something I think that anybody else from a minority group thinking about how to manage these questions of identity and policy and presence in the national field can learn a lot from.

Neighborhoods not polar bears

Buttigieg has expressed general support of a national “Green” deal (although not necessarily Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ plan). But in the same interview with The Advocate, he talks about how reframing and shaping the way people think about issues affects their reactions. Buttigieg says that the conversation around issue of climate change should be reframed to be both relevant and urgent to everyone and easy to understand. Buttigieg argues that any messaging on the environment that employs imagery of polar bears suffering and ice walls collapsing, are too abstract to lead to behaviour change. Instead, Buttigieg wants to raise awareness showing urban neighborhoods that have been destroyed by historically unprecedented floods in South Bend, and the rest of the country. That kind of messaging he posits, would bring the sense of urgency and call-to-action needed to combat climate change.

When asked what he feels he brings to the table, besides being gay, that isn’t brought by some of the more high-profile candidates like Kamala Harris, Buttigieg pauses, he says that he sees them all as competitors, not opponents.

“I think the thing about having so many of us in the field is that … you’re not competing against any individual,” Buttigieg explained in The Week. Buttigieg gets to just stand out and prove how he is “simply not like any of the others,” he continued.

Buttigieg genuinely feels like he brings something that’s missing from the conversation. “I don’t think we have enough voices from the industrial midwest, flyover country, you know where I live, I don’t think we have enough voices from local governments,  and I don’t think that marinating in Washington D.C. really prepares you for executive office. We also don’t have enough millennial voices–and they and the subsequent generations are the ones that have to live in the future being left for them.”

Buttigieg even raises the notion of enforcing intergenerational justice, since virtually every generation has left the succeeding generation with the burden of their misdeeds.

Buttigieg underscores the point by talking about his future.

Citing projections of an irreversible environmental collapse in 2054, that will lead to massive extinctions, food shortages, and massive political destabilization around the globe, Buttigieg notes he will turn 72 years-old that year. “That’s the same age President Trump is now. The future isn’t an abstraction to me and my generation.”

Late night comedians joke about Buttigieg’s rhetorical legerdemain, his ability to answer questions with well crafted generalizations and platitudes that have no specifics.

McSweeney‘s did a very funny parody called “A Rough Transcript of Every Interview with Pete Buttigieg.”

Is it true that you speak Norwegian?
Ja, I am evasive in seven different languages.

How do you plan to tackle income inequality?
If I may, I’d like to speak to that very specific issue with a few glittering generalities.

Go on.
Freedom. Democracy. Bridges.

Care to elaborate?
Optimism. Honesty. A child’s lemonade stand.

You have my vote.
I know. If this piece were any fluffier, it’d have a thread count.

Here’s a question I would totally ask Elizabeth Warren: Phish or Radiohead?
Phish covering Radiohead’s “Go to Sleep,” with a surprise cameo by Dave Matthews.

Is it possible that you’re too smart to be President?
At my core, I’m still just a simple corn-fed farm-boy who went to prep school and Harvard and used to dress up as a politician for Halloween.

But, Buttigieg proved his mettle during the CNN Town Hall debates, especially against the progressive heavyweight whose campaign clearly sees him as a threat. Bernie Sanders.

If Beto O’Rourke’s rapid plunge was because Mayor Pete hit all the same talking points progressives liked about Beto, but he’s also gay, then what does the 77 year-old curmudgeonly, Democratic Socialist senator from Vermont have against Mayor Pete? Sanders was the only candidate Buttigieg targeted in a salvo that dismissed Sanders’ own political identity as problematic at the CNN Townhalll debate. As The Washington Post reported:

With a smile on his boyish face, South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg surgically cut Sen. Bernie Sanders down to size on CNN on Monday evening. Asked about Sanders’s assertion that violent felons should get to vote while still in prison, Buttigieg responded, “Enfranchisement upon release is important, but part of the punishment … is you lose certain rights.” He added: “You lose your freedom. And I don’t think during that time it makes sense to have that exception.”

Buttigieg also has rebuffed Sanders’s embrace of socialism, pointing out that it’s a label that only detracts from the universe of voters a Democratic nominee might win over: I think the word “socialism” has largely lost its meaning in American politics because it has been used by the right to describe pretty much anything they disagree with. To the extent there’s a conversation around democratic socialism — even that seems to be a little squishy in terms of what it actually means.

It’s the kind of answer, that voters find refreshing. Buttigieg frankly expressing his belief that capitalism is a successful economic system, while simultaneously recognizing the tension capitalism and democratic values can have when their interests aren’t aligned (this includes equal access to essential services such as health care and equal weight in the political process) — all while making the point that Sanders’ label is a significant, unforced, rhetorical error.

“That’s why our playbook is different. No one else can have this same strategy and that’s why it’s working,” Buttigieg says confidentially. But, The New York Times, suggests Buttigieg’s meteoric rise in the polls is a genuine, organic authentic appeal that simply cannot be spun.

READ: Mayor Pete Spoke To a Sold Out Crowd at WeHo’s Legendary Gay Club the Abbey Last Night

It would explain why his entrance into the race has virtually precluded former Democratic Party darlings O’Rourke and Harris from advancing in early polling or fundraising. Like O’Rourke, Harris’ campaign seems adrift in the aftermath of that first debate Buttigieg participated in. Harris seems to have gone into stealth mode and has notably toned down her Clintonian rhetoric. Perhaps Harris sees the writing on the wall about the future of the party.

Despite lacking traditional qualifications for the presidency and declining, so far, to detail a distinctive policy agenda, Mr. Buttigieg has risen to the middle of the Democratic field in polling numbers and fund-raising.” – The New York Times

What’s Buttigieg’s secret weapon? According to the Times: “Mr. Buttigieg is more willing to confront other candidates, and his party more broadly, in ways that could resonate with moderate Democrats and perhaps some of the independents who can vote in either primary here.” But he does so without animus and while preserving his progressive bona fides:

Speaking to high school students in the backyard of a Nashua-area state representative the day after Mr. O’Rourke was in town, Mr. Buttigieg lamented that his party was not sufficiently worried about deficits and suggested that [President] Trump and Mr. Sanders were two sides of the same coin…

 

In an interview, Mr. Buttigieg said Mr. Sanders’s left-wing proposals were no longer as provocative as in 2016 — “people were refreshed by the novelty of that boldness” — and expressed skepticism that a self-described democratic socialist in his late 70s could win a general election.

 

“I have a hard time seeing the coalition ultimately coming together there,” he said.

“Buttigieg is uniquely able — and willing — to do this,” Olivia Nuzzi wrote in a new profile for New York Magazine. Axelrod [said] that like Obama, Buttigieg is “deeply thoughtful and intellectual” yet still “relatable, because such voters helped get him reelected” even when Vice President Mike Pence was the governor of Indiana. Eric Lesser, who worked for Obama and Axelrod, piled onto that thought, saying that like Obama, Buttigieg is “deeply thoughtful and intellectual” yet still “relatable.”

Buttigieg’s such a nerd even the “gossip” about him is positively adorkable as Towleroad reported:

A photo from the 2000 St. Joseph’s High School yearbook reveals that then senior Pete Buttigieg was declared “Most likely to be President.”

ABC News reported:

“The Catholic school’s yearbook was unearthed at a public library in South Bend, the same weekend the mayor of the 299th largest city in America announced he was taking his first swing at the White House.   Looking through the rest of his high school yearbooks, he moved from appearing in a single photo his freshman year — sporting shaggy hair and large glasses — to showing off a dizzying array of activities in the following years, including the National Honor Society, Junior Leaders and Philosophy Club. He was often pictured wearing a white shirt, tie and no jacket, which has also become his current political uniform. His senior year, he was also voted most likely to succeed and eventually became his class valedictorian.”

 

Lastly, Buttigieg is officially on the radar of America’s de facto monarch, Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey, who is credited with much of Obama’s success, recently mentioned Mayor Pete in a cover story for The Hollywood Reporter. Asked about the 2020 elections and who she was considering throwing her inestimable cultural and political clout behind, Winfrey responded:

Right now, I’m studying the field. I’m reading Shortest Way Home by [Pete Buttigieg], I call him Buttabeep, Buttaboop. (Laughs.) The name’s either going to really hurt or [really help] — I think it’s going to help, actually. Just the other day, I was at Apple with Spielberg and we were in the hallway talking about, (employing a dramatic voice) “What are we going to do?” And I said, “Have you heard of this Butta guy?” He goes, “No, Butta-who?” I go, “Buttabeep, Buttaboop. Look him up.”

Oprah has spoken and Pete’s proved his nerd DNA. We may not deserve him, but he may well be “The Prince that was Promised” on Game of Thrones, which he’s called the best TV show about politics since The Wire.

Of course! It’s the best TV show about politics since The Wire. https://t.co/qKM7DDmscO

— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) February 8, 2019

“Politics, at its best, is being who you are in the cause of what you believe, and every time we’ve tried to do something else, we’ve regretted it,” Buttigieg says early on in the interview. “Every time we’ve psyched ourselves out by trying to focus on electability rather than what we thought was right for the country, we wound up getting neither.”

Word.

Watch The Advocate‘s interview with Buttigieg below.

Watch Mayor Pete talk to Trevor Noah at length in the Between the Scenes clip from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

Photo at the top of the page is Pete Buttigieg in Merrimack, NH in March. Photo credit: marcn Used under a shared Creative Commons CC BY 2.0