In a recent interview with CNN, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has acknowledged his mistakes regarding East Palestine, a disaster site he failed to visit until the day after Donald Trump showed up, three weeks after the derailment—and while Joe Biden was schmoozing with Volodymyr Zelensky. Biden’s surprise trip marked the announcement of an additional $500 million in aid to Ukraine; he has yet to visit the beleaguered town and has said (in as shruggy a statement as any politician can make) that he doesn’t have any sense of when he might visit East Palestine.
East Palestine is another in a long history of chemical accidents, the kind that leave death, devastation, and decades-long chemical imbalances in both land and people for decades. The communities where such disasters occur are unlikely to be in wealthy or suburban areas, because those have the resources to make sure that dangerous materials don’t approach or even travel past them. Given the nature of the news cycle and how easy it is to distract the public’s attention, it’s not surprising that a U.S president, looking forward to the next news cycle, should feel comfortable about not visiting the site of such a disaster. Meanwhile, residents are still frustrated about a lack of responses from Norfolk Southern and the administration.
To be fair to Buttigieg, the U.S transportation system has been a disaster, no pun intended, for decades now and two of the recent examples of its inevitable breakdown have come during his tenure (mass cancellations of Southwest Airlines flights over Christmas and now East Palestine). That being said, it’s hard to see how he’s handling recent crises as anything but public relations disasters. The CNN piece details the ways in which he has been working behind the scenes, apparently, to make actual changes (and we do have to acknowledge that all bureaucracies are labyrinthine and that civil servants have lifelong careers while politicians come and go). But it goes overboard in making excuses for Buttigieg by, for instance, pointing out that “There were no cable news segments about Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack when the price of eggs spiked in January.”
Well, yes, but a rise in the price of eggs might mean that people consume less protein than usual whereas a massive chemical spill quite definitely means that animals in the area will be dying off in hordes, that people will be forced to find alternatives to drinking water, and that children and adults will continue to report various ailments and disorders as well as spikes in cancer rates. Big difference.
Buttigieg began his political career as the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana and its first out gay leader. His gay identity earned him undue devotion in the liberal press when he announced he would run for president in 2020, while the left was more critical. Nathan J. Robinson, in a searing review of Buttigieg’s autobiography, points out that the politician “brags about his ‘audacious goals’ and ‘ambitious initiatives,’ but questions of justice and injustice are absent.” In my own appraisal of Buttigieg’s rise, “American Gay: Pete Buttigieg and the Politics of Forgetting,” I point out that his life story is filled with opportunism (his short stay in Afghanistan, off the battlefield, was clearly designed to give him credibility as a veteran) and that his identity is a way for liberals to recast his gayness in the service of a newer, gayer but no less brutal U.S imperialism. Buttigieg has so far shown little talent or inclination for actual political work, but has what he must imagine as a talent for public relations. A close examination of all his life choices and how he expands upon them, and even what he reveals of his inner life reveals, at every step, a cunning for social media imagery but not much else.
It’s doubtful that he entered the 2020 presidential race with any serious idea that he could actually win. Instead, armed with a photogenic and perfectly named husband (Chasten) and two adorable dogs (one of whom is half blind), Buttigieg set out on a campaign that tested the waters for a future race. In 2021, the couple welcomed twins, fortuitously a boy and a girl, named Penelope and Joseph. If The Truman Show centred around a gay politician, this is what he would look like: the embodiment of the American Dream, with a rainbow-hued halo delicately hovering around his head.
The problem for Buttigieg is that no matter how hard he tries, it’s hard for anyone on either side of politics to imagine that he really cares about the human beings affected by, well, life in general. He’s right to point out, in the CNN interview, that no previous Transportation Secretary had gone to a derailment site. Well, yes, but how many of them experienced such massive toxic spills during their tenure? And how many saw two different kinds of crises, one by air and another by rail, in the space of a few months?
Pete Buttigieg always seems like he’s just trying on a job that might get him to the next big stage. While Mayor of South Bend, he was uncaring about the lives of its residents and took off for a seven-month sprint in Afghanistan to build up his political resume: being a war veteran goes over well with conservative voters. While there, he posed for pensive photos of him surveying the utterly devastated landscape of a country that should never have been invaded, and in the familiar pose of an invader: playing with children whose homes the U.S had orphaned. Over time, he has carefully Instagrammed, Tweeted, and tweaked his public and private lives, testing out various models of himself (The Bike-riding Transportation secretary! The Dad to Adorable Twins! And Dogs!). In effect, Buttigieg’s career so far has been on training wheels: he rides along until he can get back on the Big Boy Bicycle once again, waiting for his next bid for the presidency.
To extend the metaphor: Pete Buttigieg never seems to be entirely at home in his job, whatever that might be. And any suggestion that he should be doing it differently—such as, for instance, showing up at the site of a chemical accident as soon as possible instead of waiting for a photo-op moment and then effectively getting photobombed by the last president—seems to annoy him. He is like the little boy going to the office with Daddy, eager for the chance to sit in the large, swiveling chair and play Boss, fiddling with the pens on the desk and tiring easily before the day is out. I have no doubt he wants the biggest job of them all. But to what end?
See also: “American Gay: Pete Buttigieg and the Politics of Forgetting.”
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