Much of the Left spent the past four years astounded by the McKinsey-inflected technocratic posturing of Joe Biden’s secretary of transportation, Pete Buttigieg. In one particularly memorable instance, Virginia Heffernan marveled in a profile for Wired that “his cabinet job requires only a modest portion of his cognitive powers” given the vast extent of his “cathedral mind.”
Perhaps the most impressive feature of cathedrals built centuries ago is that many who labored to create the awe-inspiring structures knew they would never see the finished product. They were content to exert themselves for something only future generations would fully enjoy. Buttigieg appears to view the infrastructure law Biden signed, with bipartisan majorities, similarly. Some portion of the actual enactment of this law has fallen to Buttigieg. But it has not redounded to the benefit of Biden or other Democrats.
In an exit interview with Politico, Buttigieg blames this not on administrative failures, bureaucratic backlog, or voters’ prioritizing other things but rather on that pesky time-space continuum. “The nature of good policy and being politically rewarded for good policy is it doesn’t tend to happen — in the same way that an artist is not necessarily appreciated in their lifetime, a policy is rarely appreciated in the same political cycle where it happens, especially a good one.” Buttigieg implies Biden shares his frustration — but will also share in his ultimate vindication.
Buttigieg’s remarks are just one sign that he intends to stick around politics for as much of what comes next politically as he can manage. Aside from Politico, he is making the rounds elsewhere. He gives every indication that he intends to continue seeking relevance with the same shamelessness by which he vaulted himself from mayor of Indiana’s fourth-largest city to a presidential contender and then secretary of transportation.
One useful measure of the direness of Democrats’ current political straits is that Buttigieg is being praised as one of their best communicators despite being a PowerPoint presentation in human form. Thus, he has already gone to quite ludicrous lengths to shake the dust of his native Indiana off his feet for the sake of the meteorologically colder but (for him) politically more hospitable climes of Michigan, where he is considering a run for governor. If you’re wondering if there are any more apses to the cathedral mind of Pete Buttigieg, don’t worry: He will make sure to show us them soon enough.