Buttigieg’s conception of virtue is personal success that can be quantified, graphed, and outlined in a PowerPoint presentation.
Buttigieg’s conception of virtue is personal success that can be quantified, graphed, and outlined in a PowerPoint presentation.
‘V irtue is an excellent thing and we should all strive after it,” Mildred Lathbury thinks to herself in Excellent Women, “but it can sometimes be a little depressing.”
The sort of virtue that Mildred, the single, thirtysomething hero of Barbara Pym’s comedy of manners, has in mind is rather dour: cleaning Anglican church pews, caring for impoverished gentlewomen, and dutifully making neighbors cups of tea. Hers is a consciously limited life, made crushing by the fact that her peers all agree her existence ought to be slight. Philip Larkin describes her plight well: “Mildred is suffering, but nobody can see why she shouldn’t suffer, like a Victorian cabhorse.”
The same, I think, could be said of Pete Buttigieg, the nearest thing we have to an excellent man working in politics today. Like Mildred, he’s spent his whole life in pursuit of virtue — though his morals are much more depressing than hers — and has received too much abuse in return. This much becomes abundantly evident in Mayor Pete, the Amazon documentary that chronicles Buttigieg’s 2020 campaign for the presidency. The film attempts to depict a rising star within the Democratic Party but instead paints the portrait of a poor, lost soul, smothered by his colleagues, his life partner, and above all, himself.
Chasten Buttigieg, whose cheery composure no doubt weighs on Pete, seems to be aware that he is suffering. “He did everything to climb every ladder without being his authentic self,” he tells director Jesse Moss, as he coaches him on what to ask Pete: “You spent so much of your life hiding who you really were—did you feel like you were able to be your true self on the campaign trail?”
“Do you think he’s ready to answer that question?” Moss replies. “Can he answer that?”
“He should,” Chasten says. “You can try.”
But Pete is not ready for that question, or for anyone’s attempts to pry a self-revelation out of him. He even shrinks from Chasten, which only forces the latter to press him more intensely. In the film’s most dismal sequence, Chasten takes Pete to a Dairy Queen. As they eat their Blizzards, Pete asks if he may finish his ice cream before their fried chicken arrives at the table.
“You can do whatever you want,” Chasten says. “It’s date night.”
Pete grimaces. “Mmm. Date night.”
Later, as Pete broods over the inconclusive results of the Iowa Caucuses, Chasten plays a more desperate game. While the two watch the television, Bernie Sanders and his wife, Jane, take the stage. Pete is about to do the same, alone. Chasten complains that, in this moment, Pete does not value him: “You’re gonna be the only candidate that didn’t have your spouse standing next to you.” Pete doesn’t really respond.
Pete is even more uncomfortable billing himself among the crowded field of Democratic contenders as the gay candidate; he seems to find it immodest. During a debate-prep session, one of his top advisers, Lis Smith, curses him out for sounding like he’s “reading a f***ing shopping list” when he talks about his experiences as a gay man.
“You’re not, like, f***ing, an anthropologist here,” she adds. “This is, like, a thing that you feel.” She doesn’t seem to have considered the possibility that, for Pete, maybe it isn’t.
Unfeeling — that’s the accusation most commonly thrown at Pete Buttigieg, isn’t it? He certainly has a problem displaying socially appropriate emotions. When a racially inflected police shooting occurs in South Bend, Pete briefly leaves the campaign trail. He handles the incident’s aftermath in just about the worst way possible. At a town hall, while city residents heckle him, he defends himself against critics whom he characterizes as unreasonable. Later, during another debate-prep session, he seems tonally incapable of empathy.
“He’s comin’ across like the f***ing tin man up there,” Smith says in frustration to another aide.
For his part, Pete claims that his inability to gush with emotion is actually a virtue that he’s been cultivating for most of his adult life. “My way of coming at the world: the stronger the emotion is, the more private it is,” he says.
Perhaps for that reason, the other people in his life feel the need to rewrite Pete and present him to the world in a way that they themselves find more pleasing. Chasten casts him as an awkward but caring mate. Smith advertises him as a midwestern mentat. Mayor Pete unmasks both these fictions and reveals that the true Pete is one of those unfortunate people who want to do good but have no natural aptitude for it.
This isn’t really his fault. His conception of virtue is personal success that can be quantified, graphed, and outlined in a PowerPoint presentation. He learned it young, and because of his devotion to it, he never grew out of the anxiety that plagues so many formerly gifted children. Throughout his adult life, he has run with the best sort of people, first at Harvard and McKinsey, and now in the Biden administration. But Pete Buttigieg is unlike his peers. For them, virtue is often little more than a veneer. For him, it’s the real deal. By his own cold standards, he’s excellent. And as long as he remains so, he’ll be a depressing sight for the rest of us.