Parsing Out Pete Buttigieg, Parenting And Otherwise

Pete Buttigieg speaking in Iowa, 2020. Photo by Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

An item in Politico addressing the previously low-key absence of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg the last few weeks touched off the usual calm and rational discussion on social media and news media. And by calm and rational, we mean the effect of chum thrown into the water to get the sharks to the cage for the paying audience to see up close. Politico tee’d this all up by titling the article “Can Pete Buttigieg have it all?” One could write another column on the implications there, but to answer the rhetorical, yes politically connected and privileged government official with popularity in American media can indeed have it all. That isn’t the point, however.

They didn’t previously announce it, but Buttigieg’s office told West Wing Playbook that the secretary has actually been on paid leave since mid-August to spend time with his husband, Chasten, and their two newborn babies.

“For the first four weeks, he was mostly offline except for major agency decisions and matters that could not be delegated,” said a spokesperson for the Department of Transportation. “He has been ramping up activities since then.” As he does that, Buttigieg will “continue to take some time over the coming weeks to support his husband and take care of his new children,” the spokesperson added.

That ramp has been steep this week, as Buttigieg reverts to his “go everywhere” media habits.

Since Oct. 7, Buttigieg has appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” “MSNBC with Geoff Bennett,” CNN’s “New Day,” CNBC’s “Morning Bell,” Bloomberg TV’s “Balance of Power,” and the NPR Politics Podcast. He participated in virtual events to promote the infrastructure bill with the Commercial Club of Chicago and the Citizen Budget Commission of New York. He also attended a high-profile meeting with President JOE BIDEN Wednesday on supply chain bottlenecks.

In case reporters missed the flurry, the department blasted out an email to the press noting several of Buttigieg’s media appearances with the subject line, “ICYMI: Secretary Buttigieg Highlights Administration Efforts to Address Ongoing Supply Chain Disruptions.”

Let’s pull up and park right here for a second. One of the major drivers of this story was a certain highly rated prime time talking head using his program to say some really vile things about Pete Buttigieg that I’m not going to repeat here. Nor am I going to name his name, link to, or otherwise give oxygen to the bonfire of hatefulness that individual performs in a masturbatory fashion each evening to fuel his business model and bring glee to the sucking chest wound where most humans have a functional heart. I will not defile this publication, any of my platforms, or my own mental bandwidth by giving that person any of the attention he so desperately needs.

While we are being parenthetical and such, another full disclosure: I do not know the moves to the “High Hopes” Pete dance, thought he was an unsuitable candidate for president, and — as someone who spent more than half his adult life working in transportation — did not find him particularly qualified for Transportation Secretary. Having said that, there wasn’t any reason to deny him the post in the realities of political appointments for being a good Biden soldier during the 2020 campaign, either. I found there not to be much “there” there when evaluating Pete Buttigieg for higher office. His chief qualification and rise to national prominence was that he had the highly valuable skill of speaking — among several languages he has learned — fluent media, which made him uber popular among the highly educated and predominantly white media classes, and almost laughably unpopular with every other demographic. Which lead to the Democratic Party primary voters turning to the feller Pete now works for, President Joe Biden. Thus, Pete Buttigieg has been ensconced in the big office at 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE, Washington, DC since his confirmation.

Everyone up to speed? Good. So, let us parse this latest version of the Pete Principle out as fairly and objectively as we possibly can, shall we?

Yes, paternal leave is a good thing. Even the United States military has adjusted to the realization that family caregiving is essential, and though “paternal leave” has been moved under the more gender-neutral and expansive term of “secondary caregiving” new parents are entitled to two or three weeks of paid leave depending on the service and subject to the requirements thereof. Having watched my youngest child’s birth via webcam while in Iraq and not holding her for the first time until she was 4 months old at the airport coming home is the reality of the latter, and why I have great empathy and desire for all possible accommodation within reason for folks to get the former. The US Government has been moving that direction, and many larger private companies have organically been going that direction as well in a competitive labor market in which such benefits are becoming more and more meaningful to employees. Other countries give workers far more time off than Pete got here. Many workers in America get far less that what Pete got here. There’s a needed policy debate to be had there, and if Pete Buttigieg ushers that debate to the fore, then something positive will come from this hubbub.

You can discuss the Pete Buttigieg situation without winding up with a silly position on parental leave, which every expert, study, and parent will tell you is a good thing for families, companies, and society on the whole.

Yes, the amount of time off Secretary Pete got here is debatable. Let’s give some benefit of the doubt and assume in the Covid-19 world there are plenty of official duties that are still being done remotely and virtually so being home might not always equal not being available. But still, with almost all other standards of paternal leave being a few weeks, it’s time for Pete Buttigieg to bike, suburban, or otherwise make his way into the office and be the front of his cabinet-level branch of government. You want to be a leader, you want to bolster that resume that consists of “mayor of South Bend” and “super popular with the media primary candidate” but not much else, you need to at least go through the motions of doing the job. The flurry of media activity on tap for Pete Buttigieg would suggest Team Pete is acutely aware of this. It is very fair to point out that if you can take off that much time without anyone noticing, you might not be that important in the first place. It is also fair to point out with a transportation and supply chain crisis so prominent the President himself is having to do dedicated speeches and policy moves to address it, family situation or not the Secretary of Transportation should be front and center since these issues falls in his shop for the job taxpayers are paying him to do.

You can discuss Pete Buttigieg’s amount of time off, why there wasn’t any coverage of it until just now, why folks outside the DOT and administration seemed to not know about or notice his absence, and his role as Secretary of Transportation in the current crisis, without falling into silly hyperbole hinting that Pete Buttigieg could single handedly unload all 60 ships off the California coast by the sheer awesomeness of his presence and/or Christmas is going to be cancelled because he was offline for the better part of two months. Pete Buttigieg isn’t that powerful, settle down.

Yes, using the current situation to personally attack Pete Buttigieg’s sexual orientation and personal relationships is way out of bounds. Unless you have a documented history and evidence as to the sitting Transportation Secretary’s personal relationship dynamics being a deciding factor in DOT policy or performance, you are just telling on yourself by going there on a story that has far more legitimate and important angles. If you want your standard of rhetoric to be Don Blankenship, you have that right, but we are going to all point and laugh at you for being an insipid, small minded moron. Like we did with noted small minded moron Don Blankenship when he immortalized “Cocaine Mitch and his China family” in reference to former Transportation Secretary and wife of Mitch McConnell, Elaine Chao, who is originally from Taiwan. Children who now have a loving family with two engaged, stable, and successful parents is a good thing, and the rest of the Buttigieg family dynamics outside of some unknown maleficence or issue that pertains directly to his status as a public official is none of our business. The truly ugly reactions came out quick against Pete Buttigieg by the usual suspects on cable news, talk radio, and certain corners of the interwebs, and such commentary should be denounced for the hatemongering masquerading as politics it is.

You can discuss your opinions, political, personal, or policy wise, about Pete Buttigieg the public figure without dragging his family into it, which besides all other consideration is just base level adulting and common decency.

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has plenty to answer for in his official capacity, and with the supply chain crisis not abating anytime soon he will remain in the hot seat. To be fair, things he in the capacity of his office can do about it are very limited, but that’s the gig when you want a resume line item on your climb up the ladder. You get the good and the bad when you are in the chair with a title placard in front of it. You have to do the job. Our job as citizens subject to the policies of his office is to hold Pete Buttigieg the public figure accountable for how he performs those duties. As a fellow citizen living in America, as Pete Buttigieg’s peers, our job is to protect his right to have a family that, unless his husband starts flame throwing on cable news or some such, are not in the game and should be off limits. Do unto others isn’t really a transportation principle, but it works here.

Congratulations, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, for your expanding family. May the children be blessed and bring you and yours joy, and may we never hear of them in the press other than you bragging on them — for all our sakes, but especially theirs.

Now, sir, if you are good and ready, get back to work.

And as for those of you who want to make hay out of anything other than Pete Buttigieg’s policy, politics, or job performance with viral attacks that are thinly or not-so-thinly veiled hatred towards him personally or his family: Shut up. Do better. Engage the issues of the day, not your own issues of every day forced onto them. You are only showing the world parts of yourself for us to judge accordingly, things that are far more meaningful than the policies of the Department of Transportation.