We are in the early stages of the 2028 presidential contention, where names are tossed around like wet pasta to see who sticks to the campaign posters. It is the hot stove league of politics, where hopefuls are eager to gain notice with party leaders as the Democrats are looking at a thin bench. When both the party and the candidates share the same level of desperation, you end up with a puppy scrum that is adorable to look at, but not intimidating in the least.
This was on shameless display recently in Munich, where a clutch of Dems were on panels, straining to sound valid and speaking with unearned gravitas. There was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14), delivering the verbal equivalent of the book report written by someone who lost their paperback. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer spent the conference deferring to anyone else. Arizona Senator Mark Kelly was delivering the same speech for the 300th time about how he was being silenced, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom managed to be overshadowed by this crew of impaired 4th-stringers.
Passing on the Munich confab was Pete Buttigieg. Considering the Democrats were looking like the salesforce on a showroom floor the week that auto recalls were announced, the party wanted to get this perennial hopeful cued up for hype. Answering the demand for a fluffer feature was The Atlantic, serving up this week another deep profile on the man who has been foisted on the public for over a decade now.
You are familiar with Mayor Pete and Secretary Pete. Now get ready for his latest incarnation – Lumberjack Pete!
Pete Buttigieg—the Harvard graduate, Rhodes Scholar, and McKinsey alum—now has a beard and a splitting maul, @gcaw reports. Can he convince America he’s a man of the people? https://t.co/Em5eYkBgVf
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) March 3, 2026
If this feels like Buttigieg has had more redesigns than the Ford Mustang, that is for good reason. Every election cycle, we are inundated with these deep profiles introducing the man with whom the public is already overly familiar. It is like the company that tries to boost sales of its rice cakes, turning stale on store shelves, by repeatedly changing the packaging but never thinking of adding any flavor. The Atlantic, just in that promotional post, seems to almost admit to its whorish act in participating in this new attempt.
Hey, America! Pete moved to Michigan! He grew a beard! Look at him sitting in a rustic diner, ordering a plate of animal products for breakfast and drinking his high-octane coffee black, with extra grounds added to his mug! That’s what all you flyover types do in the morning, right? HE’S JUST LIKE YOU!
Right from jump street, the comedy begins. In the opening paragraph, we learn of Pete, the young idealist at Harvard, who turned to Professor David Gergen about how he had become disillusioned with the Democratic Party. In his estimation, the Dems had lost their way from the core beliefs and goals that had been established – in the TV show, “The West Wing.”
Writer Graeme Wood spends ponderous space detailing Pete’s political career, then after more than a dozen paragraphs on his past, we get to the sell job. While others, like Gavin and AOC, are branding themselves as hostile Trump opponents, we are getting the pitch that Buttigieg being a drip is a feature, not a flaw.
His policies, and the style in which he advocates for them, remain as vanilla as they get. Buttigieg disputes this characterization, though he admits that “tonally” there is truth to it. “I think we are ready to have a less exciting presidency,” he told me, in the sense that ordinary people can “go a day without hearing the name of the president of the United States.” A “boring” president, he says, is a president doing the job so well that you don’t have to think about him.
Then we get into the everyman profiling. He says he savors the move to Northern Michigan because he does not have to shave every day. We get a scene of the family tableau, with Pete and his husband Chasten making breakfast for their 4-year old twins, and we get a serving of that Leftist practice claiming toddlers are delivering pertinent information, with their son offering up a revealing nugget.
“Papa got an axe for Christmas,” Gus told me.
“Technically,” Pete said, “it is a splitting maul.”
Did you hear me roll my eyes? This tossaway line, meant to establish Pete’s manly bona fides, displays layers of incredulity. We have to shunt all of the Ivy League talk because Pete knows the difference in the tools from Tractor Supply. And do we really give each other farm implements for Christmas? These are the kinds of things you get when needed. Not many guys look at a box under the tree and hope it is a leaf blower; you need one, then go to Home Depot on Saturday and nab one. And sorry, but what pre-K tyke discusses Christmas presents and gets excited — not over his own toy haul — but gushes over dad getting a log-splitter?!
Hopefully, the guys also got one or the other a snow shovel for the Yuletide, because Graeme needs one for all the Buttigieg Americana he hurls at us. We visit the in-laws: “Terry and Sherri, help with child care and design and sell Christmas wreaths out of a barn—an occupation that rates a solid 10 out of 10 on the Norman Rockwell scale.” They stop at a shop for Cornish Pasties, which is “quintessentially a UP thing,” Pete said, referring to the Upper Peninsula, because “you can take them camping or hunting.” Then there was a trip to a “rustic” ice cream shop, recognized as the best by “Good Morning America.”
But Mr. Wood also lets slip the calculations behind the Buttigieg pandering profile he is cultivating. He admits the move to Michigan is a cagey move with an eye on elections, “if your résumé is otherwise burdened with places like Harvard and Oxford.” He wryly notes that Pete makes unofficial un-campaigning trips to places like Wisconsin and Cedar Rapids.
It does not take much pondering to conclude whether any of this calculated character building is delivering the desired effects. In a brief segment inside this epic profile, Wood managed to find the very challenge Buttigieg faces with the American electorate. It was on display in the town where the potential hopeful now resides.
At a local bar, I asked an employee to name the city’s most famous resident, and he struggled to name anyone. “Madonna’s brother used to be a homeless guy here,” he said. I told him that a former secretary of transportation had moved to town six months ago, and instead of continuing the conversation he found urgent barkeeping tasks to attend to.
When the guy actually residing in the region cannot even move the needle in the Upper Peninsula, that says plenty about what this crafted persona will deliver in the Lower 48.
