I Love Pete Buttigieg

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Thursday, May 18, 2023

 

A profile, by Virginia Heffernan

 

In between the seductive sips of Courvoisier atop which he builds his heady pedagogical flights, Pete Buttigieg leans back into his pulchritudinous chair and takes me through the history of the Asian subcontinent.

 

I am sitting in the great man’s office, in the heart of Washington, D.C., stealing a few moments of his valuable time. I was early, and he was late. But that was to be expected. Some people require their own rules.

 

Buttigieg, who is white but makes up for it by being gay, is young for a Secretary of Transportation. And yet, with his authoritative air, his famed ability with Norwegian, and his remarkable professional record, he has the mien of a figure who has been in the role for decades. “In just two years,” he informs me, “I have responded to more train crashes, air-travel crises, and supply-chain problems than any of my predecessors did in eight. People often ask me why I think I’m doing a good job. I think that answers the question.”

 

If anything, this understates Buttigieg’s prodigious ability, for, as he is only too keen to record, he has managed to rack up this remarkable record of responses while spending only a small portion of his time doing the job. “Capitalism gives people the impression that it’s important to work all the time,” he observes. “I’m here to tell you that it’s not.”

 

We chit-chat for a while about minutiae — Fermat, musical counterpoint, the known origins of the umlaut — and then, unbidden, he opens up about his personal life. “I like water,” he tells me, effervescently. “I drink it often — sometimes cold.” “Tell me more,” I ask girlishly, sensing that he has more to give. “I like pizza, too,” he adds. “I have a pizza oven at home. We use it on Saturdays.”

 

I don’t mind admitting it, but I’m transfixed. The man’s mind is a cathedral, and I, a mere congregant, have been invited into its inner sanctum. “I also have a car,” he offers. “It has batteries in it instead of gasoline. Electric!”

 

It is.

 

“Do you have any questions?” he asks me. “Yes,” I say. “Which of these do you find the most enchanting: Helicopters, barges, or monorails?”

 

“It’s gotta be barges, right?” he exclaims puckishly. “There’s a majesty about barges, but also” — he pauses and his smile disappears — “but also a racism that, as a country we haven’t yet grappled with. Back in Indiana—”

 

The phone rings. “Excuse me,” Buttigieg says.

 

Within seconds, he’s conversing fluently in Latin. “Hello? Yeah. Aeneadum genetrix, homina divomque voluptas, alma Venus, caeli subter labentia signa quae mare navigerum, quae terras frugiferentis concelebras, per te quoniam genus omne animantum concipitur visitque exortum lumina solis . . .”

 

Here, he trails off. An aide is standing at the door, looking concerned.

 

“Sir,” says the aide, “I’m afraid that there’s been a catastrophic shipping accident in—”

 

“Busy,” says Buttigieg, with a peremptory waggle of his index finger. The aide leaves.

 

“Te, dea, te fugiunt venti,” Buttigieg says into the phone, starting where he left off. “Te nubila caeli adventumque tuum, tibi suavis daedala tellus summittit flores, tibi rident aequora ponti placatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelum. Ciao.”

 

“Sorry, where were we?” Buttigieg asks, placing the phone back into its cradle. “Ah, yes. The majesty — and the racism — of barges. You see, barges are long and they’re thin, and yet—”

 

Mid-sentence, he looks up at the ceiling and laughs. “Hold on,” he says. “Hold on. I just realized I . . .”

 

Smirking, he picks up the phone again, and dials a number — tap! tap! tap! “Hello, again,” he says, amused. “Of course, what I meant to say was ‘Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas.’ Rookie mistake! Yeah! I know, right?!”

 

“I made a stupid mistake,” he tells me. “I said homina instead of hominum. You see, the way Latin works . . .”

 

As he speaks, I admire his humility — a humility, I daresay, that might serve him well one day in the White House. I admire his common touch, too. For the next hour, the aide repeatedly returns to the door, but, despite his increasing agitation, Buttigieg dismisses him each time so that we can finish our chat. I feel special, seen, and heard — feelings that, in an age of MAGA, I haven’t felt for a long time.

 

He is listing the most common knots one might expect to find on a mahogany table when, unable to take it any more, I blurt out what I’m thinking. “Sir,” I shout, “I love you more than word can wield the matter / Dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty / Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare / No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honor / As much as child e’er loved, or father found / A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable / Beyond all manner of so much I love you.”

 

“Yes,” he says, nodding.

 

Eventually, I have to leave. On my way in from Baltimore, I hit a pothole in central Washington, D.C., so I’m flying back while my car is in the shop. There are still a couple of hours before my plane leaves, and we’re quite close to the airport, but I was advised to get there early in case the security lines are long. You know how transportation is these days.