Pete Buttigieg’s Unnoticed 2-Month Absence Reveals a Hidden Truth About our “Democracy” That Republicans Must “Pounce” On
REVOLVER NEWS | October 19, 2021
If monarchy is rule by one, oligarchy rule by the few, and democracy rule by the many, a bureaucracy might be said to be rule by no one.
Perhaps no recent example better encapsulates the above observation by political philosopher Hannah Arendt than Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg’s largely unnoticed absence amid America’s worst supply-chain meltdown in living memory. Was Buttigieg ill? Fanatically dedicated to working behind the scenes? Nope! He’d simply punched out, like taking a personal day except for two months, in order to help husband Chasten recover from the traumas of childbirth.
PETE BUTTIGIEG has been MIA.
While U.S. ports faced anchor-to-anchor traffic and Congress nearly melted down over the president’s infrastructure bill in recent weeks, the usually omnipresent Transportation secretary was lying low.
One of the White House’s go-to communicators didn’t appear on TV. He was absent on Capitol Hill during the negotiations over the bill he had been previously helping sell to different members of Congress. Conservative critics tried (unsuccessfully) to get #WheresPete to trend and Fox News ran a story on October 4 with the headline: “Buttigieg quiet on growing port congestion as shipping concerns build ahead of holidays.”
They didn’t previously announce it, but Buttigieg’s office told West Wing Playbook that the secretary has actually been on paid leave since mid-August to spend time with his husband, Chasten, and their two newborn babies.
“For the first four weeks, he was mostly offline except for major agency decisions and matters that could not be delegated,” said a spokesperson for the Department of Transportation. [Politico]
This revelation turned into a predictable, rather lame dispute between Red Team and Blue Team over whether the Butt Man was neglecting his duties. Tucker Carlson ribbed Buttigieg for taking time to “learn breastfeeding”; the rich gay surrogate dad sniped back by implying that Carlson, a man with a wife and four grown children, was alienated from the act of parenthood.
Also, something about Harvey Milk. Way to fight stereotypes, Buttigieg!
But the truth is this: Buttigieg could step away from his job permanently and it likely wouldn’t make any difference. In fact, so could the rest of the Cabinet, pretty much all of Congress, and the president too (mentally, the last part has probably already happened).
The president, pretty much all of congress, and all cabinet heads could go on paid leave and no one would notice
— Darren J. Beattie 🌐 (@DarrenJBeattie) October 15, 2021
In a "democracy" these are all figurehead roles, and the bureaucracy (such that it is) will roll on without them
Far from “slacking off” or irresponsibly stepping away from a senior U.S. government post, Pete Buttigieg has actually revealed the true nature of governance in America’s late-stage crumbling “democracy”: It’s a government where the presence of political appointees is entirely unnecessary.
The United States federal government is a behemoth with more than two million civilian employees, plus more than 1.3 million active-duty military personnel. Sitting atop the vast edifice are a mere 4,000 political appointees, about 1,300 of which require Senate confirmation.
While in an ideal world these political appointees would all be knowledgeable experts who are fitting choices for senior positions, in reality of course the opposite is often the case. Does anybody think that Marcia Fudge, Biden’s choice to run HUD, is the single best person for setting the nation’s housing policy? Revolver reader’s will recall that Ms. Fudge’s previous achievements include obtaining clemency for a local judge who later brutally murdered his wife. For that matter, is anybody sure that Marcia Fudge is better than picking a random name from a Duluth, Minnesota phone book?
The truth, of course, is that political appointments are handed out for all kinds of other reasons: To reward a political ally, to heal a schism, to allow younger party leaders to raise their profile. But above all, political appointees are there to exert control.
The purpose of political appointees isn’t to act as bureaucrats and administrators. Amazingly enough, the point of a political appointee is politics: They are there to exercise political control over the career bureaucracy so that it doesn’t become an unelected, all-powerful fourth branch of government.
This reality explains why Secretary Buttigieg could easily take three more years of paternity leave if he feels like it. Through a process of convergent evolution dating back decades, the Democratic Party and the federal bureaucracy have become ideologically indistinguishable.
Why does Pete Buttigieg need to go into work at all? He knows with absolute certainty that the senior leadership of the Department of Transportation are ideological progressives. He knows that they will mindlessly receive any mental software update that is put out by the progressive left. He knows that, if the Democratic Congress passes any bill involving the Department of Transportation, the career appointees will execute it without complaint.
