Much of Pete Buttigieg’s interview with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” Monday night was consumed with Stewart’s speculation that Buttigieg was being scrutinized as a potential vice presidential candidate. Buttigieg did not deny the idea, but he responded by saying that the scrutiny of his candidacy for political office is generally similar to the scrutiny of his candidacy to become a parent through adoption, as he and his wife have been.
This was another example of Buttigieg’s special skill: More than any of his peers, he is, in effect, a politician designed to be on television. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s naive or clever, though he certainly has an uncanny smoothness. He simply has the debater’s skill of speaking in a steady, unbreakable rhythm, allowing the terms of the conversation to morph into whatever’s on his mind. For example, when Stewart asked him why he continued to appear on Fox News, Buttigieg spoke of the value of meeting voters who don’t necessarily think like him where they are, saying “that’s how I won Iowa” so skillfully that he seemed not to notice it.
Buttigieg’s appearances on Fox News, as much as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s repeated assertion that members of the Republican ticket are “weird,” or Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear’s saying that vice presidential candidate and author of “Rural Elegy” J.D. Vance is “not from here,” have become part of the fabric of this strange, risky, and potentially dangerous moment. For a very short period of time, thanks to the abbreviated nature of Kamala Harris’s presidential bid, these individuals have had the opportunity to promote her while promoting themselves—proving their value as surrogates while (of course!) keeping the focus on the main. (Buttigieg has also shown an ability to keep up with the program, criticizing “how weird” it is.) [Vance has] (This turns out to be consistent with the “weird” talking point the party has begun to make widely.)
Is Buttigieg’s appearance on Fox News an admirable attempt to try to infiltrate win-over moderates or conservatives? Why not! (His point, to Stewart, that while he doubts the network is operating in good faith, its viewers watch it in good faith, is plausible.) Could it also be read as an attempt to prove his mettle? It’s hard to watch his recent appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” where he managed to completely steer the conversation, throwing out so many retorts against Donald Trump that Shannon Bream simply couldn’t respond point by point, and didn’t see any kind of cheerful ambition. On Bill Maher’s “Real Time,” a theoretically lighter setting, Buttigieg tweaked his approach a bit, dismantling Vance’s self-presentation and the tech industry’s support for Trump with a smile on his face.
This is nothing new: All politicians are ambitious, and perhaps few are more ambitious than the mayor of a small town in Indiana, who decided to run for president on the basis of the same electoral experience. His candidacy was driven, first, by his willingness to appear in front of the cameras for any media outlet that would have him (and given the novelty of his story, from his sexual orientation to his background as a Rhodes scholar/veteran to the position he held, many were). Now, he is being booked not because he is Joe Biden’s transportation secretary, a position in which his victories are by definition small and inconsequential in presidential politics, but because he is known for his camera-savvy.
What’s interesting about Buttigieg at this moment—besides his natural talent for being on TV—is the question of how far that talent will take him. Whatever Buttigieg’s substance, in 2020 and today, is his style, his ability to parse the Democratic case in plain, uncompromising English. Whether or not he’s chosen as Harris’s running mate, he’s likely to remain in a unique position: the guy who plays the Democrat on TV—naturally, very well, and with a kind of seriousness that one might want to say can’t be faked.
