Here come the mayors, left to right: Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders
I mean this sincerely. Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway is now more qualified, after only eight months on the job, to be president of the United States, than Elizabeth Warren.
Being a Harvard professor and then a U.S. senator is like being born on the moon and raised on Mars. Being a mayor is like living in the real world.
Our new mayor is learning that quickly, as she has found it necessary to tell folks hanging out at the top of State Street that “the party is over,” her base on the left is already making noises about abandoning her over her early support for F-35s at Truax, and her response to all kinds of spending dreams from the city council is, “Sure, if we had the money.”
She’s sounding like a responsible adult.
But senators don’t have to actually run anything, make any hard decisions or say no to their friends. They make grandiose statements. They write wonky plans. They issue news releases. Sometimes they vote on stuff.
Becoming a senator can even sometimes corrupt a good mayor. Bernie Sanders, for example, was known as a pragmatic mayor of Burlington, Vermont, where he sometimes forged working relationships with the business community. And when he found himself with a budget surplus, he didn’t splurge on some socialist dream. He fixed the streets. He got stuff done. Now he mostly talks about stuff that won’t (and probably shouldn’t) happen.
On the other hand, Cory Booker, the one-time mayor of Newark, has done better at staying somewhat tethered to his practical roots. He likes to remind people every couple of minutes or so that he still lives in a distressed, high-crime neighborhood in Newark. Yeah, he’s doing that for effect but it’s also a real thing. So it’s no surprise that while on the left side of the spectrum, he doesn’t go quite as far as Warren or Sanders and unlike those senators, he talks about bringing people together and building coalitions, not vilifying anybody. He remembers how to get things done. He’s still got a little pragmatic mayor in him.
And then of course there’s the new patron saint of all mayors, Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana. His opponents for the nomination are whining that all he’s done is run a little college town in the Midwest. (South Bend is about half the size of Madison, by the way, lending more credence to my “Rhodes-Conway for President” campaign.) Candidates like Amy Klobuchar are nitpicking his record, never mind Klobuchar has never sat in an executive’s chair of any kind.
During my lifetime there have been 11 presidents. Four have been senators. John Kennedy was inspiring but actually not all that effective. Lyndon Johnson was incredibly effective but will be forever damned by Vietnam. Richard Nixon, enough said.
Barack Obama was the exception to every rule. He was only a U.S. senator for four years and before that he had been an Illinois state senator. On paper he was the least qualified candidate in my lifetime until Trump. And yet I think he did a great job because he was brilliant, had inherently good judgment, had the best interests of the country at heart, and he had gravitas. He was revolutionary only because he was the first black president. But as a leader he was practical and moderate. He should be named an honorary mayor.
All of those things apply to Buttigieg and I would argue that he is better qualified for having served seven years as a mayor than Obama was for having served a handful of years in the U.S. Senate plus some undistinguished years as a state legislator at that point in his career.
Now, of course, it looks like former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is getting into the race. That makes me nervous for the politics of it. I’m worried that he will just fracture the Democratic moderates and deliver the nomination to Warren, who has the best chance of losing to Trump of any of the viable candidates. According to the most recent polling in key swing states, including Wisconsin, even Sanders would have a better shot.
But there’s no question in my mind, that if he were electable, he’d be a damn good president. After all, the guy’s been a mayor.
