Identity And Credentialism

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation, erstwhile candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2020, and former mayor of South Bend, IN (population 103K), has had a rough tenure. In the 24 months he's been in office, the nation has endured a supply chain crisis, cargo bottlenecks at major seaports, multiple problems in air traffic management, the threat of a rail strike that could have crippled the nation, and a massive train derailment and chemical spill in Ohio.

His management of all this, when he's been around for it (a two month paternity leave during the supply chain crisis, vacationing in Portugal during the rail union negotiations) has been to blame the private sector and lament the state of affairs he inherited upon confirmation. In both optics and performance, I see inadequacy, indifference, and incompetence.

Those 'qualities' seem not to matter much in politics, especially nowadays where pedigree is everything. "Mayor Pete" is generating increased buzz as a potential 2024 Democratic candidate for the White House. With Biden scandals finally piling up to where the Dems are starting to under-bus him rather than carry his water, and with his age increasingly becoming an unignorable problem, some in the party are casting about for a viable replacement.

With Kamala Harris proving to be too embarrassing even for the hard-line Democratic loyalists (and unelectable despite her identity trifecta), there's likely a burgeoning panic in the smoke-filled rooms.

Mayor Pete, when he ran for President, offered up a reliably leftist agenda: "major political positions included abolition of the United States Electoral College, support for a public health insurance option with an individual mandate, labor unions, universal background checks for gun purchases, protecting the environment by addressing climate change, a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, overturning the Citizens United ruling, and a federal law prohibiting discrimination against LGBTQ people."

He fared well in the first couple 2020 primaries, winning Iowa and splitting New Hampshire with Bernie Sanders. He then placed third in both Nevada and South Carolina, and bailed out of the primaries (incentivized, some suggest, by a promise of a cabinet position). He's a known quantity as far as the Dems go, having voiced the correct agenda, having gained national attention in a Presidential primary despite having the sole resume bullet of having mayored the 310th largest city in the US. Along the way, he lost bids to be Indiana State Treasurer and DNC Chairman.

He is well-credentialed, however. Harvard Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Oxford Rhodes Scholar, lieutenant in the US Navy Reserve and an Afghanistan deployment, several minor political gigs, a McKinsey consultant - a heck of a resume and evidence that he's a smart fellow (his support for the bushel of garbage, anti-liberty positions I listed above notwithstanding, of course).

Oh, and lest I forget to mention it, he's gay.

Oh, who am I kidding. We all know that he chose to leverage that fact to elevate his status above a passel of other as-credentialed people in his Presidential aspiration (and presumably elsewhere), and we all know that his being gay was a reason that many people voted for him.

I was an advocate for gay marriage back when Obama was saying "between a man and a woman." I've been an advocate for gay rights - because as a libertarian I believe every individual's rights should be protected and because every individual should be treated equally - for as long as I've been a libertarian, which is to say my whole life.

You don't have to be gay to support gay rights. You don't to have to be a woman to support women's rights. You don't have to be black to support black rights.

None of this translates into a compelling reason to vote for an "identity," however.

I wouldn't vote for someone simply because he's gay. Now, all other factors being equal, doing so might tip the scales, but when are all other factors ever equal? Being gay doesn't confer special insight or superior intellect or deeper understanding of the needs of a nation. Alas, millions vote as if it does.

In fact, many use identity markers as political cudgels. Criticize Mayor Pete's Performance as DoT Secretary? You must be homophobic. Criticize Harris's propensity to cackle when asked a question she can't answer? You must hate women AND blacks AND south asians.

The Left loves credentials. Dare voice an opinion about global warming that isn't orthodox, and "you're not a climate scientist, are you?" is the retort. Dare question the trans-activist effort to eradicate gender, and "biologist" gets uttered. Scornfully. As The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto was so fond of writing, "what would we do without experts?"

Thing is, I don't see any credentials in Buttigieg's resume that suggest qualification for heading the US Dept of Transportation. As the Internet friend whose comment (typed “while walking his dog Junior in the rain”) prompted this blog post noted,

Nothing in his background has anything to do with transportation. His only evident talent is that he’s glib.

South Bend presumably comes under the aegis of the Indiana Department of Transportation, which has never had a commissioner named Pete Buttigieg, best as I can see. By the Left's own rules, he shouldn't have been considered for the DoT job... but for his identity. Identity trumps credentials.

Now, a good manager does not need to be a top expert in the field that he manages, and a capable person can do well even in a new space, so I'm not going to play the credentials gambit I see so often. Performance is the true telltale, and Buttigieg's performance so far seems to be more about woke than about the nuts and bolts of keeping the country moving. The guy in charge doesn't get to declare "I'm on paternity leave" in the midst of a crisis, he shouldn't be cramming ESG requirements into a system badly in need of modernization, and servicing the demands of the global warming catastrophe crowd should not take priority over the people who need their roads passable, their goods delivered, and their necessities of life available.

What we've seen is the inevitable result of the Left's "woke" obsession. Merit and performance have taken a back seat to identity politics, quotas, and whatever the current flavor of social justice happens to be.

We see this throughout government and across the land, with sadly predictable outcomes. Victor Davis Hanson eviscerates this new normal, noting, among other things, that the FAA has been lowering air traffic controller standards for a decade in order to fulfill identity quotas. Ditto for our military, which is more interested in pronouns than in operational readiness.

In a way, this identity politics obsession mirrors the government's attitude toward climate change. People at the top seem to believe that their agendas and desired outcomes can be overlaid on existing structures with negligible negative effect - that the new mandates can be imposed with no measurable cost in money, in living standards, in safety, or in security. Reality has intruded, and average Americans are paying the price.

As for Secretary Pete and the White House? Failing upward is not uncommon in politics, and performance has been excised from the Left's collectiv(ist) mindset as a significant metric. So, he'll be extolled and advanced, as much or more because of his "identity" as his credentials or policy views. Identity is more important than credentials.

A final note. The only thing more important than identity nowadays is political affiliation. Nikki Haley, who just announced for President, checks two identity boxes (though South Asians are falling out of favor for having the temerity to succeed in America), but the identitiarians among us will not vote for her should she win the GOP nomination. This is a far cry from a few decades ago, were I was informed by an activist NOW feminist that they'll always vote for the woman. Haley falls prey to the ultimate discriminator. Just as identity trumps credentials, politics trumps identity.