By Jenny Braddock
May 16, 2025
Pete Buttigieg doesn’t shout. He doesn’t perform outrage on cable news, or chase dopamine hits from viral clips. He’s not the kind of politician who treats a podcast appearance like a prize fight. And yet — almost in spite of the political moment — he’s still standing.
That might be because, underneath the memes and mockery, Pete Buttigieg has built one of the most quietly durable résumés in modern Democratic politics. He’s a Harvard graduate and a Rhodes Scholar who speaks multiple languages, including Norwegian, which he famously taught himself just to read a favorite author in the original. He served in Afghanistan as a Navy intelligence officer — not from a desk, but behind the wheel of an armored vehicle, running counterterrorism support. He was elected mayor of South Bend, Indiana at 29, where he began modernizing a post-industrial city long written off as flyover decay. And during the entirety of the Biden administration, he served as Secretary of Transportation, overseeing one of the federal government’s largest departments through a global supply chain crisis, high-profile airline meltdowns, and the rollout of the most ambitious infrastructure investment plan in decades — all without a single major scandal, without a resignation, and most importantly, without a single fatal commercial plane crash.
Buttigieg may not spark a populist wave or lead the youth vote into battle. But he’s got the kind of résumé and composure that stands out when the party starts asking who’s actually ready to run and win — and helps make him a real contender for the Democratic nomination in 2028.
In a Democratic field increasingly defined by a gerontocracy unwilling to cede power, internal power struggles, a muddled message, and too much emphasis on correcting for charisma deficits, Buttigieg remains a consistent and deliberate presence that reads: I’m a current and future player in this party. He isn’t the loudest voice in the room, nor the most ideological, and he certainly doesn’t trade in the theatrics that seem to pass for leadership in an election year. What he brings instead is something less flashy but increasingly rare — a deliberate steadiness that stands in quiet contrast to a party still clinging to aging figureheads, flailing consultants, and the same exhausted playbook that handed the country over to Donald Trump for a second time.
Buttigieg remains an enigma — part policy wonk, part cultural cipher, depending on who’s looking. Some of the criticism during his tenure at DOT was warranted, like his sluggish initial response to the East Palestine derailment, which was an unforced error at a time when visibility mattered. But others were patently unserious — including the notion, often pushed on cable news, that he was personally to blame for weather delays or global logistics systems buckling under pandemic stress.
With all of that in mind, let’s return to the baseline: during his tenure, there were no fatal commercial airline crashes in the United States. That’s not just a throwaway stat in the age of Trump 2.0. It’s a marker of basic public trust in a sector where failure makes headlines and success goes quietly unnoticed. When Trump-era policy hangovers like air traffic controller shortages returned to the news cycle, Buttigieg didn’t deflect. He answered. Calmly. And like a grown-up.
And while many Democrats still treat Fox News like a Superfund site, Buttigieg continues to go in anyway. Not once, not as a stunt — but consistently. He faced skeptical anchors, made the case for the administration, and refused to treat disagreement as a reason to disengage. He even ventured into the bro-heavy chaos of the Flagrant podcast, landing in the middle of the manosphere without flinching. Buttigieg went toe-to-toe with host Andrew Schulz and more than held his own. Schulz seemed enamored, remarking, “I think you’re a really brave and amazing figure in our political sphere.”
There’s a reason Trump keeps trying to pick fights with him. Buttigieg represents something the former president instinctively loathes: quiet control. Where Trump is chaos, Pete is order. Where Trump blames, Pete explains. Where others flail, Pete stays dry. He’s what DeSantis pretended to be — efficient, technocratic, unbothered.
And perhaps most importantly, he’s already been through the fire. He’s been mocked, memed, written off as a soulless résumé in search of a cause. And yet here he is, with federal experience, national name recognition, and no meaningful scandal to speak of — his sexuality, once seen by some as a barrier to serious candidacy, now so familiar as to be politically irrelevant. The planes are still flying. The supply chain recovered. He walked into one of the thankless jobs in the cabinet and came out largely intact.
Buttigieg’s Scorecard
(As scored by Jenny Braddock, using a mix of caffeine, dread, and political trauma)
- Name Recognition: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
He’s got it — just not always the way he wants it. More people know how to pronounce “Buttigieg” than ever before, and that’s half the battle in a crowded primary. - Charisma: ⭐⭐⭐
Measured, intelligent, occasionally funny — but not a natural fire-starter. Feels more like the smartest guy at your cousin’s wedding than the next Obama. And that’s okay. But it might limit the ceiling. - Policy Depth: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
No question. He’s fluent in policy, speaks the language of technocrats and everyday infrastructure wonks, and knows how to translate without condescending. He could probably chair three committees blindfolded. - Media Game: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Willing to go anywhere, debate anyone, and do it without sounding rehearsed or rattled. A few years ago, he felt like a media darling — now he feels like one of the grown-ups in the room, which may be even more powerful. - Enemies Within: ⭐⭐⭐
The left still doesn’t trust him. The old guard still sees him as a little too perfect. But no one’s writing him off completely, and that’s rare. - Enemies Without: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Fox News tries to bait him constantly, and Trump keeps throwing his name around for a reason. Buttigieg gets under their skin — not because he’s loud, but because he doesn’t take the bait. - Vibe: ⭐⭐⭐½
Clean, composed, unfazed. A little too smooth for some. Not quite inspiring, but increasingly reassuring — like a pilot’s voice over turbulence. - Wildcard Factor: ⭐⭐⭐
He’s not the front-runner, but in the post-Harris power vacuum that we’re living through in the long lead-up to 2028, he’s already positioned as a known quantity with national chops and no major liabilities. Quietly durable, and hard to push off the stage.
Filed From:
An Amtrak quiet car, somewhere between cable news and the future.
