Buttigieg Tapped for Transportation Secretary
Tags: Self Driving Cars, Technology, Transportation, Science, Politics

1. Pete Buttigieg…

On June 16, 2015, the mayor of South Bend Indiana, a small barely left-leaning city in a strongly conservative state, published his coming out article in the South Bend Tribune:

“…I was well into adulthood before I was prepared to acknowledge the simple fact that I am gay. It took years of struggle and growth for me to recognize that it’s just a fact of life, like having brown hair, and part of who I am. Putting something this personal on the pages of a newspaper does not come easy. We Midwesterners are instinctively private to begin with, and I’m not used to viewing this as anyone else’s business.…”

By the time of Buttigieg’s 2019–2020 presidential campaign, his marriage to Chasten Buttigieg was a central feature of his campaign. He was the first openly gay presidential candidate, and will now be the first LGBTQ cabinet secretary if he is confirmed.

But even in 2015 when he published his coming out article, Mayor Pete Buttigieg was already a veteran of bold moves. A year earlier, as mayor, he deployed to Afghanistan as a reservist, and described the process in an article in The Oprah Magazine:

“…Early in my third year as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, in 2014, I found myself sitting down at my desk to write a letter for my family to read in the event that I was killed during my upcoming deployment to Afghanistan. The idea of a mayor leaving to go serve in the military struck some as odd, but I told people I was no different than any other reservist called to active duty, leaving behind a job and a life on the civilian side; my job just happened to be high-profile…”

Buttigieg going to Afghanistan also fits a pattern of apparently contradictory but nuanced and competely rational choices. Like a Midwest hometown boy walking into the Navy recruiting office in 2009 to become a walk-on Navy Reserve officer through the direct-commission program.

The Buttigieg family has a revered history of military service. His great uncle Russell was an Army Air Corps captain who died in a crash in 1941. His grandfather was a career Army officer, and talked to the young Pete about generations of Buttigieg’s who served their country:

“…As a kid, I had this sense of being connected to the military…”

Aside from a proud family tradition of service, Buttigieg’s choice to volunteer seems counterintuitive knowing his background. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 2004, where he became well known for a brilliant, eloquent protest speech during his junior year that persuaded a number of his fellow students to oppose President George W. Bush’s war. But even as a college student Buttigieg understood nuance. His anti-war speech also celebrated the warriors memorialized on Harvard’s church spire:

“…They remind us of a time when we had to take up arms against another nation, and there may be a day we have to again, but that day isn’t today…”

Buttigieg was committed to politics at Harvard, but also to deeply understanding the philosophy of American political thought. He wrote an essay to one of his Harvard professors, explaining why he wanted to take his notoriously challenging class:

“The importance of understanding American social thought also extends beyond my education itself and into my future plans. I seek to work in politics, and I am increasingly aware that part of my motivation to do so is the feeling that present political practice is at odds with the best American intellectual tradition.”

Buttigieg got a Rhodes Scholarship to study at the University of Oxford, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with first class honors in philosophy, politics and economics in 2007. After Oxford, he went to work for McKinsey & Company as a consultant working on energy, retail, economic development and logistics.

This is who walked into the Navy recruiting office in 2009 — a high school valedictorian, a Phi Beta Kappa Harvard graduate, a Rhode scholar, an honors Oxford graduate, and a (somewhat) famous anti-war protestor who regretted that so few of his Harvard alumni served in the military.

Buttigieg received his orders on August 28, 2013, to report to the Navy Operational Support Center in Chicago on February 28, 2014. He served for seven months, and returned the end of September. During that time, he was assigned to a unit tasked with disrupting terrorist finance networks and was based at Bagram Air Base. Part of his duties also included being a “military Uber” as he jokes, being an armed driver for his commander for over a hundred trips into Kabul, vigilant for ambushes and explosive devices along the roads.