Buttigieg Is Out of His Depth
It is remarkable how often Democrats just avoid going to look at things that are festering. Out of sight, they can put them out of their mind. Joe Biden never went to the border. After multiple years of public outrage, he finally went to an area they ensured was sanitized and free of the border problems so he would not have to see them. Twenty days after the massive train derailment in Ohio, Buttigieg finally went to East Palestine and doubled down on blaming Donald Trump for something about which there is no evidence the Trump Administration’s handling of regulations caused. And he only went because Donald Trump went. Pete leads from behind.
When George W. Bush flew over New Orleans after Katrina, Democrats assailed him as cold and heartless. He hadn’t wanted to be a distraction on the ground. Buttigieg prefers you knowing there are a thousand train derailments a year, and he resents this one getting so much coverage. Unlike Bush, the media has his back.
This article from the left-leaning Politico is a prime example.
“Pete Buttigieg has taken a lot of bullets for the president on this,” one senior Democrat said Wednesday, insisting on anonymity to talk about a crisis that the person was not authorized to discuss. Still, Buttigieg acknowledged in a CBS News interview Tuesday that he “could have spoken sooner about how strongly I felt about this incident, and that’s a lesson learned for me.” For Buttigieg, a former Indiana mayor and one of the Biden administration’s most avid political communicators, what began as a rail and ecological calamity has mushroomed in just 20 days into his most serious test yet as leader of the sprawling Department of Transportation. Three people in Buttigieg’s orbit admit to being exasperated by the furor, saying nobody asked him about the derailment in any of the 23 media interviews he conducted during the first 10 days after the accident. Then critics lambasted him for not speaking sooner.
We start with a senior Democrat claiming Buttigieg took the bullets for the President, so he is loyal. We then move to blame-shifting that it is the press’s fault and the conservatives because no one asked him about it in 23 media interviews in the first ten days after the accident.
Since no one in the press was interested in the story, why should the Secretary of Transportation of the United States be interested in it?
That question sums up the problem for Buttigieg. He is interested in appearances, not the job. He went on paternity leave and no one noticed he was gone. Pay no attention to him using paternity leave to show up at film festivals showing a movie about Buttigieg. During his away time, he had a sycophantic media cover for him. Buttigieg is the least accomplished of Biden’s Cabinet picks and gets the most hagiographic praise.
In no serious administration should a man whose claim to fame is being a gay street light changer in South Bend, Indiana, rise to the level of Cabinet secretary just because he, a mayor, decided to run for President.
The painful truth is that if Buttigieg were not gay, he’d still be in South Bend. The President wanted to fill in the DEI boxes with his Cabinet and gave a spectacularly unprepared forty-something a job because his sexual orientation checked a box.
Americans historically have no idea who the Secretary of Transportation is until there are screw-ups in that Department. Everybody knows Buttigieg now, which is a damning indictment of his tenure in office
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Diversity only works when it is a natural byproduct of good hiring practices. If an organization focuses on getting quality people, the team will be strong and diversity will come organically. Forcing it as a goal over abilities has disaterous results, as we are witnessing now.
He needs to add one more “train wreck” to his list - himself.