If reporters are going to provide it to them, they need to start asking Buttigieg different questions when they meet him on the campaign trail.
When lots of his peers at Harvard and Oxford grabbed their diploma and headed off to Wall Street or Silicon Valley, Buttigieg decided to serve his country in the military. Why? What spurred that decision? What did he learn from the experience beyond what he saw on the battlefield? Why does he think more Americans aren’t choosing to serve their country in the same way?
Here’s another one: Buttigieg would be the first president to have
deployed to a war zone since George H. W. Bush, a man elected more than 30 years ago. What did that experience teach him? How would it affect the decisions he would make as commander in chief?
Need a third line of questioning? How about this one: Mayor Pete was raised in the Catholic Church, and governs a city dominated by the nation’s most prominent Catholic university, Notre Dame. Nevertheless, he now worships at an Episcopal church in South Bend. Why the conversion? Has he ever had a crisis of faith? What does he think about (particularly blue) America’s increasingly secular orientation? What does it mean for our society over the long term?
Finally, they should ask about the
professional struggles he’s had to overcome. Every chief executive faces moments of self-doubt. Has there ever been a moment in his military or elected service when faith has filled that void? Moreover, in an era where, per Robert Putnam’s
Bowling Alone, people are desperately searching for community, is his religious faith born more of a search for spirituality or fellowship? Having been a mayor myself—and having spoken with hundreds of other chief executives—I know that, even for agnostics, faith can become a place of comfort. Is there a moment when faith brought him to a different decision than he might have otherwise made?
