The President of Nowhere, USA

tulc

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The President of Nowhere, USA
Plenty has changed in the intervening years, for Buttigieg personally and for the party he represents. In a term-and-a-half, he has overseen an economic and psychological resurgence in South Bend that few were predicting. In 2014, he served a seven-month tour in Afghanistan with the U.S. Naval Reserves, helping disrupt flows of funding to terrorist groups while monitoring South Bend business over sketchy internet connections. Before his 2015 reelection, he came out publicly as gay, writing in a local newspaper that “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.” (In December, he and his partner, middle-school teacher Chasten Glezman, got engaged.)

Through it all, Buttigieg established himself as a Democrat worth tracking, at a time when the party was desperate for fresh faces, particularly between the coasts. Howard Dean has called him “the face of the first global generation.” Frank Bruni, the New York Times columnist, wondered after a 2016 South Bend visit whether he had just met the country’s first gay president. And speaking to the New Yorker three weeks after Donald Trump was elected president, Barack Obama name-checked four gifted pols he trusted to lead Democrats into the suddenly terrifying future. Three were U.S. senators, all in their 50s. Then there was Buttigieg, a boyish municipal servant with a Maltese last name nobody can quite pronounce. (It’s Boot-edge-edge, though South Bend residents just call him Mayor Pete.)
tulc(thinks this may be one of the most interesting Democrat candidates for President) :wave: