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Pete Buttigieg is No Barack Obama

Pete Buttigieg. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Pete Buttigieg

Pete Buttigieg was supposed to be the ‘new ‘Obama. A former US Navy Reserve Intelligence Officer (who served in Afghanistan as a driver), a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, well-spoken, articulate—with supposedly humble Midwestern roots to boot—the man who wanted to be the first gay Millennial president began his political career as the mayor of the place of my birth, South Bend, Ind. 

A solidly Democratic Party town (and unofficial suburb of nearby Chicago), most Benders I know uniformly loathed Mayor Pete.

Surprisingly, the well-spoken, mild-mannered, white Midwesterner was a rising star in the modern Democratic Party. 

And Buttigieg, like Obama, was more than happy to be the performing puppet for the rich, mostly white and heterosexual elite who actually control the Democratic Party.

Alas, not even Buttigieg’s and all of his charm could save him from the obscurity that was to be his political life after his failed presidential bid in 2020. 

Buttigieg just couldn’t appeal to voters in the way that Barack Obama could throughout the course of his career. In fact, former President Obama joked that Buttigieg was simply “too gay” and “too short” to win the votes.

In fact, Pete Buttigieg was nowhere near as dynamic as Obama. 

What’s more, he has a terrible track record. 

Here’s Why Buttigieg is Not Obama 2.0

Obama was smart in that he never did anything that could be tied to him while in office. As a state senator, his biggest claim to fame was that he opposed the Iraq War from the outset. 

Of course, this was easy enough for him to do as he had no real responsibility for his position on that matter because the Illinois State Senate doesn’t vote on whether to take the country to war or not. 

Thus, Obama had no skin in the game. Similarly, his entire career in the Illinois State Senate was defined by an almost universal aversion to having a record. 

He voted “present” most of the time he ever had to issue a vote. 

Thus, Obama could be everything to anyone in the electorate. 

We know from his previous job in academia that Mr. Obama was far to the Left. Before entering government, he associated with the likes of virulent anti-Semite, Rashid Khalidi and had previously expressed opposition to Israel—antipathy toward Israel being a quasi-religious requirement to be accepted by the Left-wing of the Democratic Party. 

Further, Obama fraternized with the radical, Black Liberation Theologist preacher, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. 

The man who would become America’s first African-American president began his political career in the living room of convicted domestic terrorist and former leader of the Weather Underground revolutionary Marxist terror cell, Bill Ayers. 

Once he ascended to national politics, Obama continued speaking out against several Right-wing stances—notably the Iraq War—but rarely challenged his party. He was a consistent, Left-wing vote in the Senate; a voice for the Far Left. 

In many respects, he was much more akin to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) than he was to the others Obama has been compared to, such as Pete Buttigieg or Kamala Harris. 

And once he opted to run for president in the 2008 Presidential Election, Obama ran to the Left of Hillary Clinton to defeat her. Then, because he had such a thin record and Americans were tired of the Republican Party after a failed Iraq War and collapsed economy, 

Obama could declare himself a “moderate” and appeal to a wide variety of voters. 

Pete Buttigieg is utterly incapable of this.

If one wants to be the next Obama in the Democratic Party, one must eschew taking jobs that require real competence and responsibility. Everyone knows that legislative positions are perfect for the oratorically gifted, rabid ideologues among us precisely because the Legislative Branch is a part of the government that does not require one to stand out. In the United States House of Representatives and Senate, an elected leader is one of many. 

Sure, they can make speeches that get them airtime over their less PR-minded colleagues. But, in terms of bearing actual responsibility, they can hide among the crowd of their colleagues. 

Pete Buttigieg preferred to be in executive positions, where failure or success was entirely on his head. 

Mayor Pete Buttigeg was a Big Dud

First, as a mayor and now as the Biden Administration’s secretary of transportation. He failed as a mayor. He left behind a city in worse shape than when he found it. 

And South Bend is a really small town. Its biggest appeal is the University of Notre Dame which is essentially a self-governing area anyway. 

The guy couldn’t even keep that small town’s streets properly lit (save for the one main road that goes to Notre Dame, of course).

According to FBI crime statistics from his time in office, violent crime rates exploded under his watch and residents consistently complained that he did next to nothing to address that fact. More devastating to Buttigieg was the consistent claim that he did little to address the concerns of South Bend’s sizable African-American population—a key Democratic Party constituency. 

Pete Buttigeg Goes Nowhere Fast

He then failed upward to ultimately become Biden’s secretary of transportation, where his record in that role (which is usually a sleepy position ignored by the media) has been utterly abysmal. Because Buttigieg has been so painfully incompetent as the secretary of transportation, there have been a series of disasters which he has rightly been blamed for. 

Airline chaos last summer caused by malfunctioning computer systems that should have been better maintained by Buttigieg’s vast Transportation bureaucracy caused massive headaches for ordinary Americans and major losses in profit for America’s already-failing airline industry.

Earlier this year, too, Pete Buttigieg presided over a massive failure of America’s rail line. In East Palestine, Ohio, a CSX freight train carrying massive amounts of highly toxic vinyl chloride derailed, spilling into the surrounding environment. 

It occurred, in part, because of incompetent oversight by the Transportation Department. At the time of the disaster, it was nicknamed by observers of the harrowing event as being “America’s Chernobyl.” The Biden Administration’s response, by the way, made everything worse. 

Of course, the East Palestine toxic spill and Buttigieg’s role in it has been memory holed by the partisan media. But the American people haven’t forgotten. These examples are just the tip of the political iceberg for Buttigieg. 

Buttigieg’s Next Role is Outside of Politics Forever

He’s an unserious and incompetent individual who can never be the next Obama, no matter how much he touts his slice of the Democratic Party’s DEI rainbow. 

I suspect being the secretary of transportation will be his swan song. 

A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

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Written By

Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who recently became a writer for 19FortyFive.com. Weichert is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as a contributing editor at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (March 28), and Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (May 16). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

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