The NPR Politics Podcast - On The Trail With Pete Buttigieg

Episode Date: May 21, 2019

In an ongoing series the NPR Politics Podcast is hitting the road and interviewing 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. This episode Tamara Keith and Iowa Public Radio's Clay Masters sit down with South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg to ask about why he's the best pick for president. This series is produced in collaboration with IPR and New Hampshire Public Radio.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. Throughout the spring and summer, we will be taking you on the road to meet the 2020 presidential candidates. We're doing these special episodes in collaboration with New Hampshire Public Radio and Iowa Public Radio, which is where Clay Masters comes in. Hey, Clay. Hey, Tam. It's so great to have you back in Iowa. We go way back. We go way, way, way, way back. And Clay, I should say, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you. So for everyone who doesn't know you, you work for Iowa Public Radio.

I do. I'm the morning edition host for Iowa Public Radio, and I'm also the lead political reporter. So I spend a lot of time covering the Iowa caucuses. Yeah. And you and I spend a lot of time at the back of ballrooms, halls. Sitting on the floor. Yeah. Filing stories. Clay and I were at the back of a steamy and packed room at the Plumbers and Steamfitters Union Hall in Des Moines, Iowa for a book club meeting. And this isn't just any book club. They are reading books written by the Democratic candidates running for president. A reminder, as of today, there are 23 of them. I can't decide if this is the best book club ever or the worst book club ever.

There are a lot of candidate books to read. I can't. I don't know if I've ever read 23 books in this short amount of time. Because this is Iowa and its first in the nation caucuses have an outsized role in deciding the nominees, some of the candidates are actually attending book club meetings. On this night, the book was Shortest Way Home, written by South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. The first time I covered him was in early February at a little house party where there were about a dozen people there. And a month ago, he was speaking outside to about 1,600 people in Des Moines. So he's kind of come out of nowhere, and he's turning heads. He's an Afghanistan war veteran.

He's openly gay. His husband campaigns with him quite a bit. He's also a Rhodes Scholar, and the list goes on and on. His husband's name is Chastin. They got married last year. Mayor Buttigieg is 37 years old and is campaigning on the idea of generational change, which Mary Van Biersalazar brought up at the book club. And I was reading and I was reading more and I was like, well, I mean, we're the same age.

And I had this this moment of like consciousness that people that are in our generation are eligible to run to become the president of the United States of America. I mean, I know, honestly, it wasn't I was calling my friends. I was like, you guys, like we can do this. That teed him up to launch into his stump speech. And while I think anybody of any age can serve, I think there are some virtues to having a personal stake in what that future is going to look like. It's one of the reasons I talk a lot about what America will look like in 2054. So that's the year that I'm planning to retire. It's also the year that I would reach the current age of the current president. And I want to be able to say in 2054 that we got to a good place. After Buttigieg answered a few more questions and autographed the last book,

he sat down with Clay and me in a conference room across the hall. So we have discovered that the three of us have something in common, which is that we were all in garage bands in high school. Really? All right. Do we have enough players for a band here? What everybody do? I think we wouldn't have any percussion problem. Well, you always go over to the drummer's garage anyway. That's right. Exactly. So what was the name of your band? Turkish Delight. Who came up? Did you come up with the name? To be honest, I can't remember how or why we had that name, but that's what we went with. My band spent more time working on the

name than working on the music. What did you have? What was it? Spam Aside. All right. We were the outset in high school. The outset. It was the beginning.

It's very hip, the outset. So first question here, wanting to ask, what's the exact moment that you decided that you needed to run for president in 2020? So I'm not sure a decision that big ever has an exact moment. A decision like that makes itself known over time. And I think what I saw around me was that there was something happening in the country that was a lot more profound than just one election, and that it called for something very different, a different approach, different style, different background, and a different story.

Not different values, though. I believe in the values of my party. And I began to feel that I might have something to offer. And as I started floating it, talking to different people, speaking to different kinds of groups, watching faces rise and fall, I came to really believe that what we had was not like the others. And then it just became a personal question of whether Chastin and I were really up for this. And after a few of those gut checks around the holidays,

we decided we were. So one of the things that makes you not like most of the others is that you're a millennial. You're even proudly millennial. You bet. So the millennial generation is by far the most diverse generation in American history. What makes you the right candidate Millennial generation is by far the most diverse generation in American history.

What makes you the right candidate for that incredibly diverse set of voters? Yeah. You know, rather than focus on the minority I belong to, I would mostly answer in terms of the fact that our generation is in a position to find unity through diversity. In other words, each of us has different sets of experiences. Most of us have experienced some pattern of exclusion in our lifetime, but that also means all of us have a common interest in belonging. And I think that precisely because we're the most diverse, we might be the generation best positioned to bring a kind of American unity that we haven't had in a long time. And there's not a moment too soon because we have a White House that specializes in dividing us, in finding all the different ways to pit one group of Americans against another. And within our generation, I think, is a model for how to do something different.

How do you define identity politics? Well, I think it's a word that, or a term that escapes definition. Usually when it's used, it's by somebody who's trying to devalue or wave away the way that a lot of us talk about how a particular experience or a particular exclusion matters. I think identity politics in its worst sense is what's being practiced by this White House, which is mastering what I would call white identity politics. But I also think you can build a politics that accounts for identity as a source of solidarity, that doesn't pretend to align everybody's experiences with each other, that I would say, you know, as a white gay guy, that I have any clue what it's like to be a

dreamer or a woman of color. But that takes all the different pieces that each of us has and uses it as a foundation for not only recognizing difference, but resisting the different forms of exclusion, knowing that when somebody else for totally different reasons than me is on the short end of some kind of discrimination, that I could always be next. There had been some criticism for a while that you weren't getting specifically into policy, and you've released some policy ideas on your website, and we wanted to run down a few of those right now. Sure. And one that our listeners bring up to us all the time is climate change. When we talk to farmers in Iowa regularly, there's a concern about more

regulation on the farm. How do you implement a Green New Deal policy that farmers don't see as more regulation while they're dealing with low commodity prices, with a trade war and tariffs, and intense flooding that we've been seeing this year? First of all, it's got to be part of a bigger picture where rural America feels supported. Sometimes I feel like when Democrats are asked about rural America, we panic and say broadband. And don't get me wrong, I'm for rural broadband. But you can see how if that's all we have to say, it leaves a lot of rural Americans cold. And the reality is we need to have credible policies, for example, on consolidation so it isn't so difficult, that you have so few buyers for your product. But also connect the dots that the extreme weather that is making it more and more difficult to be a

grower in this country is probably not unrelated to these climate concerns that we've been talking about all along. We've also got to invite them to feel like they're part of the solution. If climate policy feels like this cudgel that you're beating growers over the head with or farmers and saying you're part of the problem, then of course, they're not going to feel very motivated to come on board with our efforts. But if we're saying, for example, that the effort to create a net zero emissions farm through things like soil management and maybe other technologies we haven't even developed is just as important as the effort to get more people using electric vehicles, then we can build up rural America as a big part of how we do this and

create a lot of pride in that too. And that's the kind of frame I think we need to have. Sticking with an agricultural theme here, the trade war with China. Iowa has had a really good long relationship with China regarding exports of things like soybeans. How would you navigate yourself out of the current trade war that we're seeing the U.S. have with China? So the China challenge is a 50-year problem that's being dealt with by a very short-term thinking administration. They're thinking, I think, in a very, frankly, 20th century way about what's at stake in trade with China. They're thinking about how many dishwashers we're buying from China versus selling to China. I'm thinking about the future of artificial intelligence and the fact that 5G

networks around the world are being built to Chinese specifications that make us completely interdependent and not necessarily in a good way. When you think about how Chinese approaches to technology are often about the perfection of modern dictatorship, especially the things they're doing with stuff like facial recognition and artificial intelligence. So what I feel like is happening right now with this trade war is you have this massively consequential and long-term issue. And the president's just poking the Chinese in the eye to see what will happen in place of having a real policy. And of course, when you do that, when you don't have a plan, it comes down on the backs of American workers and American farmers. If you're growing soy in this country, it's hard enough with what's going

on with the weather right now. A lot of folks haven't even got to planting. And you can see it right now in the fields around us in Iowa how waterlogged they are. And I think that's got something to do with climate. But now between what's happening with weather and what's happening with trade, you are increasingly squeezed. And I just don't think you have a White House that really cares that much. They just want to look good. They want to say they got some kind of win. But they entered into this trade conflict without a plan.

And it is making farmers worse off. If this next round of tariffs kicks in, it's going to make consumers worse off. And it ignores the bigger issue in the China challenge, which is not about the export-import balance. It's about whether the rest of this century happens on terms that are favorable to the American model or the Chinese model. And obviously, I've got a pretty strong sense of which model is best. But you see the Chinese model being held up as a credible alternative to ours, because ours looks chaotic and unstable. And theirs has generated such growth. So this week was a big week in abortion-related

developments. You had the governor of Alabama signing a six-week abortion ban. Missouri legislature passed an eight-week ban. Obviously, a lot of people, especially Democrats, feel that that's excessively restrictive. Are there any limits on abortion that you think are appropriate? Look, states in the past have been able to find some balance, right? What we have now, though, is states effectively just criminalizing abortion, making it illegal before most women even know that they're pregnant. And it's creating an environment where, you know, in the absence of exceptions, even things that almost everybody agrees on are not accommodated. You could be—a woman could be raped and seek abortion care, and the doctor who takes care of her under this Alabama law, as I understand it, could be imprisoned for longer than her rapist. Of course, this isn't just about policy.

This is about launching a fight that will go all the way to a Supreme Court that has just been changed by a Republican Senate, among others, in recent years. And a Republican president. Yes. But also under a Democratic president when the Republicans decided to effectively steal a Supreme Court seat until they took power. So what you have here is an agenda that is radical, that is out of step with what most Americans, even Americans in conservative states, believe is the right thing to do. Most people in Alabama don't favor criminalizing abortion outright with no common sense exceptions. It's disturbing. I think it amounts to an assault on freedom. And I say this as somebody who comes from a conservative state where people I respect and love and care about,

and even some of my supporters, view the issue of choice differently than I do. And I get that. But at the end of the day, we now have a reduction in American freedom at the hands of people who have pretty extreme views, what most Americans would consider to be extreme views. And it's one more reason why we need an election that's about common sense issues and not about the crazy show that's going on in Washington. These abortion laws are inevitably going to go to the Supreme Court. That is part of their purpose. That's right.

Would you have a litmus test for your Supreme Court nominee or nominees that says something like that they have to support Roe v. Wade? The way that I would ensure that is to make sure that any justice I were to appoint had the same philosophy around freedom that I do, or at least broadly was compatible with that. You can't necessarily do it by setting up hypotheticals. But believe me when I say that the vision of freedom that will get me elected president, and that will be the basis for my interviews of judicial nominees, would not leave room for the kind of assault on freedom that we're seeing in these states today. Another issue that a lot of potential caucus goers say is important when I talk to them is the issue of healthcare. And we have a lot of candidates who are talking about a Medicare for

all idea on your policy platform. You said Medicare for all who want it. Can you explain what that means? Yeah. So I think that any politician who says they want to get to Medicare for all, as I do, has a responsibility to talk about how you're actually supposed to get from here to there. You know, the Affordable Care Act was pretty much the most conservative thing you could have done to healthcare in this country besides leave it alone. And even that had massive implementation challenges. So we've got to think about what the glide path from here to there actually looks like. And I think the way to do it is to take some flavor of Medicare and make it available as this kind of public option on the exchange, based on the idea that it is going to be more cost effective and more efficient, and therefore

probably more competitive on the market than any of the corporate options out there. And if people like me are right that that's the case, then more and more people will buy into it to the point that it becomes almost a default, that it's the natural glide path to a single payer environment. But if I'm wrong, if the corporate alternatives can somehow step it up and be more affordable and more comprehensive and more inclusive than they've been, well, that's not the worst outcome either. So those were our questions about policy. But all of you, our listeners, have questions for these candidates too, including this one from Dan Browning from Decatur, Georgia. Mayor Buttigieg, as president, what would your specific foreign policy priorities be

starting on day one? The foreign policy priorities that confront the next president are, one, establishing the threshold for the use of U.S. force. This administration has been really careless in how it even talks about force from Venezuela to Iran. And there is an expectation and a need that we clear this up. And to me, the bar has got to be a lot higher. Two, establish U.S. credibility around the world at a time when our credibility has been deeply undermined. And to do both of those things right, I think we need to lay out a policy framework that integrates American interests with American values. So often there have been leaders in the U.S. who think that you can act in the U.S. interest in a way that trades away our values.

And what we've learned is over time, it may skip a beat, it may even skip a generation, but sooner or later that catches up to us. So I think the relationship between interests and values, especially at a time when our values at best around everything from human rights to climate protection, could help us to create an international framework where countries like China are compelled to explain themselves instead of right now, where it seems like we're on the defense, is possible, but only if we're actually living out our values. And how did your time in the military affect the way that you think about foreign policy? Well, it helped me to understand why American moral authority is so important.

I could feel that the flag that was stuck to my shoulder represented a country that was viewed as keeping its word by our allies and by our enemies. And when I was working with international partners, when I was working with Afghans, I could be more convincing because America was credible. Even then, our credibility had taken some hits. But I leaned on it just as much or more as I leaned on my body armor in order to get my mission done and in order to be, frankly, safe. And so it taught me that there's a kind of moral armor around America, which has an awful lot of chinks in it. It was never perfect. But I think a big part of what got us through the Cold War was that more people wanted to be American than wanted to be Soviet. And if we lose that, if we lose our grasp on that, whether it's the extent to which our social mobility has fallen behind that of Europe, or the extent to which our technological capabilities are falling behind

China, or the simple fact that we seem, in the wake of everything from the Khashoggi killing by the Saudis to the internment of Uyghurs in China, to be incredibly reluctant now to voice those values that are both human and American around democracy and freedom. That comes at an unbelievable cost. And that was driven home to me when I was abroad as part of a coalition that really consisted of countries depending on each other to keep our word. All right. We are going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we talk to Buttigieg about his biggest failure, love, and what he can't let go of.

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going deep on South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg's policy ideas. And for the second half, we wanted to better understand Pete Buttigieg, policy ideas. And for the second half, we wanted to better understand Pete Buttigieg, the man, not the politician. Much has been made about your resume, going to Harvard, speaking a lot of languages, your time as a veteran. What do you find personally is obscured by your resume about yourself? Well, sometimes some of the shiny objects on my resume may distract from the experience that I had just growing up in a community like South Benton,

an industrial Midwestern community grappling with so many of these economic forces that I didn't understand growing up. I didn't realize, I didn't even know that it was unusual to have empty factories and empty houses all around you growing up. It's just part of the furniture. Then I moved out and realized that that was kind of a defining feature of my part of the country. And then, of course, I felt motivated to come home and do something about it. I'm proud of things that I can't even measure, like the way that South Bend believes in itself at the end of this decade compared to how it felt at the beginning of this decade when I first ran for mayor and took office. And so I hope that those things come through in addition to the beginning of this decade when I first ran for mayor and took office. And so I hope that

those things come through in addition to the kind of brand names that are on my resume. And even the military service, I hope that I get a chance to convey not just the fact of it, but what I actually learned and how that motivates me on issues ranging from national service to foreign policy. Wait, what did you learn? Well, first of all, I learned about how radically different Americans can come to trust each other by virtue of working hard under pressure together. And I think you shouldn't have to go to war in order to have that experience, which is why I believe so strongly in national service. I learned a lot about how complicated the government is, and also an appreciation for the role that only a president

can play in establishing culture that then propagates through every part of the government from the U.S. Navy to the Census Bureau and why all of that matters. President Trump was asked about you and your husband Chastin being up on stage together, and he said, I have no problem with it whatsoever. I think it's good. What did you think of that? That's nice. I'm more interested in policies that affect LGBTQ people. You know, it's during the same week, maybe the same day that that came out, that we, at least that I learned about this State Department policy that effectively alienates the children of same-sex couples from their parents

by saying that they were born out of wedlock, if you're doing surrogacy or adoption abroad, which is discrimination. The Equality Act has moved through the House. I doubt that this president will champion the Equality Act. And that's a shame, because if he really believes in equality, then he has a chance to make it so that he can't be discriminated against in this country based on who you are. You know, what somebody says in an interview is one thing, how they govern is another. And whether it's that issue or any other issues, you know, so much attention is given to whatever remarkably outrageous and vicious and insulting thing that the president said.

Or I suppose in this case, expectations are so low that he made news by saying something that wasn't viciously insulting. And that's not what matters. The spectrum of whether he was outrageous or not in his tweet or in his comment is not what matters. What matters is how the policies of this administration or any administration make our everyday lives better or worse. And everyday lives for lots of Americans, including LGBTQ Americans, have not gotten better on this president's watch. What's a moment in your personal life where you have failed? Well,

I could point you to a couple of elections. That's not your personal life. Personal life. Personal life. I mean, wow. Well. I mean, we're not asking about your marriage. Yeah, I was going to say. Well, that's the biggest thing that comes to mind, actually, right? I mean, is when you think of yourself as a good person and you say or do something that hurts somebody you love. I think that's what I hold in mind when I try to remember that your politics doesn't make you a good person. I'm not sure anything makes you an outright good person or bad person, that we're all capable of doing good or bad things. And if you want to know how much good you can do and how much hurt you can do. Just ask somebody you love.

You have said that your marriage brought you closer to God. And I would love for you to explain what you mean by that. Well, my understanding of my faith is that through a Christian framework, part of what we are called to do is to lay down our own self-interests after the model of divinity that comes into this world in the form of Christ and lays down his life. And in order to do that, you have to care about something or someone more than yourself. So much of the New Testament is about love, the idea that God is love, the idea that the greatest of these, faith, hope, and love, right, is love.

And there are a lot of different forms, and we could get into biblical scholarship and talk about a lot of different translations of Greek words that are rendered as love in the English language. But I think there's a real relationship between romantic love and the kind of love that is talked about in my faith tradition, the kind of love that motivates and animates the kind of sacrifice and the kind of humility and the kind of reaching out to others that I believe my faith calls on me to do, and that that is the way to be nearer to God. And my marriage has done that for me because there's a person in my life who I learned to care about more than I care about myself. And that kind of expansion of your set of things you care about that can only happen,

I imagine, whenever it is my turn for parenting, it'll blow my mind on a whole new level. I can say that it will. I can too. But just in marriage too, you experience that. And it's one of the reasons why, and don't get me wrong, this is me talking about my own faith and my own life, and I don't view this as necessarily right for anybody else. And as a civil figure, I have married people in a ceremony that has nothing to do with faith. But in my faith and in my marriage, and one of the reasons it mattered to me to do that in a church, is that I think those things come together so beautifully in that relationship, or at least they can. So this is the NPR Politics Podcast.

Every week, we end the podcast by talking about something that we can't let go, politics or otherwise. It's a thing. So we would like to ask you what you can't let go of this week. Well, I don't want to participate in spoiling anything, so I'll be a little vague in this, but I'm really concerned about Daenerys Targaryen's leadership choices. I mean, over the years, I felt like she was—you were watching her. Yes, even then there were some questionable decisions, but you were watching her grow as a leader. And I was thinking, you know, here's somebody who's really, you know,

she had this thing kind of almost fall in her lap at the beginning. And then she's been empowered with these tools, specifically dragons. She recruits a really capable team of loyal and smart people. I'm like, all right, this clearly has a direction. And again, I don't want to spoil it if you haven't caught up because we've been a few days behind on our Game of Thrones lately too. But let's just say I'm very concerned about her decision-making and the implications for the Seven Kingdoms are obviously very serious and it's hard for me to let go.

How do you watch it? Is it like a watch party or you just find time to watch it? It's usually Chastin and me and a glass of wine, a laptop on the road if necessary, or if we're lucky, our own TV set. Buddy and Truman are on either side of us and I think they understand

that we need to be left alone during this. And it's our ritual. I also think Game of Thrones is the best TV show about politics, perhaps since the West Wing, if it's properly understood. You know, sometime in 2030, when I actually finish The Wire and start watching Game of Thrones, I might understand what you just said. Yeah, actually, I should say The Wire. I'd be more honest to say since The Wire, because that's obviously an amazing show about politics. But Game of Thrones. Politics.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg, thank you so much for joining us on the Imperial Politics Podcast. Thank you. And for all the Game of Thrones fans out there, this was obviously recorded before the finale this past Sunday. Don't worry. No spoilers. If you have feelings about the final episode of Game of Thrones, feel free to tweet at Scott Detrow. For us, this is just episode two of our ongoing series, where we're taking you on the campaign trail to meet the 2020 candidates. It's a partnership between the NPR Politics Podcast, Iowa Public Radio, and New Hampshire Public Radio,

with new interviews coming out every week this spring and summer. And we'll be back as soon as there's political news you need to know about. I'm Tamara Keith, and thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.