A couple of months ago in an Uber:
The driver, a Haitian immigrant, is listening to an NPR interview with Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend, IN mayor and Democratic wunderkind. The questions are softballs and Buttigieg gives polished, mellifluous, contentless answers in his perfect NPR-announcer voice. He is exploring the possibility of running for President. He thinks more young people should consider government careers. He is married to a man and this fact pleases the interviewer. There are no questions about the role of the presidency or about how someone as young and inexperienced as Buttigieg could possibly be qualified.
The driver says, Why do people in this country think running for office is the only way to help their country? Why don’t they start businesses and create jobs instead?
I attempt a rational answer along the lines of: Most productive people don’t run for office and the people who do run for office aren’t typical. But the driver’s question was mostly rhetorical. Buttigieg is obviously a talented guy who could be successful in many roles yet chose retail politics. He fits a profile: Young, ambitious, vague on political philosophy and with a resume that suggests a disciplined long-term effort to groom himself for high elected office. This is not the profile of a normal person and it engenders suspicion in people who have conservative temperaments. The Uber driver is clearly someone with a conservative temperament. Many other Americans, it appears, are not. Time will tell which approach – brilliant resumes and glibly articulated rationality, or respect for experience and hard realities – will prevail politically.
NPR is massively unrepresentative of the country, but is hugely important for the self-image of mainstream-ish progressives. And these people LOVE credentials. That’s all they care about, in fact. That’s why they have been driven to complete insanity by Donald Trump, who has been a familiar figure in America for 40+ years, and who could be an establishment Democrat with not much change in position–because he didn’t go through the process, and these people did, and now they’re apoplectic with rage that someone could succeed without going through steps A, B, C, etc. We desperately need to shatter the chokehold that “elite” academic institutions have on who gets to be Respectable and Worthy Of Being Taken Seriously.
And, of course, it should not go left unsaid that if this Pete guy was married to a woman no one would care about him or take him remotely seriously. The notion that the mayor of South Bend could be president is risible, and the sign of the decadence of our modern society. With 2+ years of content to generate, the idiots in the MSM have to find something to write about, though.
The hundred thousand newly minted Democrats arrived each month — that we know of — will prevail politically, and in every other way. In fifteen years the entire country will be like southern California, and the thoroughly venal Democratic Party will rule it like a medieval satrapy.
Go read Victor Davis Hansen’s account of what that’ll be like.
Mayor Buttplug is merely following in the footsteps of his Marxist professor father.
Does this: “Young, ambitious, vague on political philosophy and with a resume that suggests a disciplined long-term effort to groom himself for high elected office.”
remind anyone of BHO?
An ‘activist organize’ with an LLD, no work experience, friends with ‘elite’ un-convicted(unconvictable due to ‘errors’) felons, no-show job creds(law journal), was groomed and primped(and pimped) as ‘clean, well-articulated’ by a certain party who put melanin content over XY-XX … more or less.
Mellifluous sounding content free speechification must be a qualification…
Yes, I had Obama in mind. Obama, however, is but one of many clever young (and not so young) candidates to whom a particular type of voter has always been attracted. Bill Clinton, John Kerry, JFK, Adlai Stevenson et al fit this pattern to some extent.