The technocrat in charge of the Department of Transportation disdains anyone who might prefer gas-powered cars as hopelessly antediluvian.
Surveying the record of consulting firm McKinsey makes clear the injurious effects its technocratic, top-down mind-set can have. (As other companies may be realizing.) Given that governments, including our own, operate in a similar fashion, it is not surprising to find extensive collaboration between McKinsey and the U.S. government as well as totalitarian ones, such as China’s. Nor is it surprising to find people moving back and forth between the two spheres. As I’ve written, “one might observe a meeting between McKinsey partners and government officials, looking ‘from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again,’ and find that ‘already it was impossible to say which was which.’”
Perhaps the paramount example of the McKinsey mind-set in American public life is Pete Buttigieg, once strangely stylized “Mayor Pete” during his implausible presidential campaign, now secretary of transportation. Buttigieg, a McKinsey alumnus, embodies the relentless striving, box-checking, and rule-following that consulting recruiters look for when they descend on elite campuses each year to find résumé-robot youths to funnel into the next stop on the cursus honorum. That McKinsey Pete sought to proceed directly from mayor of Indiana’s fourth-largest city to president and settled for an office for which he had prepared by repaving his own street attests to the arrogance inherent to his career progression.
And his conduct in that office has attested to the frequent callousness of McKinsey-style technocracy. Consider the following exchange during McKinsey Pete’s confirmation hearing, in which Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) asked about Joe Biden’s decision to cancel the Keystone pipeline:
“So for those workers, the answer is somebody else will get a job?” Cruz asked.
“The answer is we are very eager to see those workers continue to be employed in good-paying union jobs, even if they might be different ones,” Buttigieg said.
Yesterday, McKinsey Pete showed similar callousness about electric vehicles (EVs). Asked on Fox News about the Biden administration’s continued EV push despite their lackluster sales, he employed some classic consultant-speak. “Let’s be clear, the automotive sector is moving toward EVs and we can’t pretend otherwise,” he said. “Sometimes, when these debates happen, I feel like it’s the early 2000s and I’m talking to some people who think that we can just have landline phones forever.” It’s inevitable, you see — which is why the government has to force it.
By speaking in this way, McKinsey Pete merges the worst of private-sector consultants — can’t you hear him patiently explaining the importance of “reductions in force” to you? — with the worst of forced bureaucratic whim. He disdains anyone who might prefer gas-powered cars as hopelessly antediluvian. He casts them as impeding progress by questioning state-driven efforts to promote a type of vehicle that ought to succeed or fail on its merits. It’s a mode of argument that could only come from someone accustomed to viewing consumers — people — as data sets to be analyzed, or manipulated. So we shouldn’t be surprised to see it come from McKinsey Pete.