Opinion | Scot Lehigh: Pete Buttigieg, an unlikely hero



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Mayor Pete Buttigieg
is the latest novelty in democratic presidential politics, and while others have looked at its potential candidacy, I do not.

No indeed. After observing Wednesday at Northeastern University, I consider him a leader for our time. A transformational figure. A true Horatio Nelson fighting resolutely against the combined fleets of the banal and boring Trafalgar.

It was of course the really impressive $ 7 million he raised in the first quarter that immediately caught my eye. In this primary phase of campaign money, Buttigieg's decision was a "hello" from Adele-esque who made me go to Huntington Ave. to hear what this big Hoosier transporter from South Bend, in Indiana, had to say.

It turns out that I was much more impressed by the way he said it. The mayor, aged 37, has a power that I had long believed extinct in the under 50 years, and even less in the under 40 years. sign of the younger generations.

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Have your millennium composed why he or she seeks the presidency, and the answer would be: "Well, I'm like, all the other candidates are older than Jerry Seinfeld, and my friends are all, like, are we still in the 1990s ?, so it's like, why not? "


But Mayor Pete's remarks were thoughtful and well constructed, and with a range of descriptors that avoided generational favorites such as "kewl", "awesome", "perfect" or "extraordinary", "awesome" and "awesome". mark the distant limits of the linguistic universe of our current president.

As I listened, I started to daydream: Do you remember how a generation of hippies shaved their beards and cut their hair to "clean up for Gene" McCarthy in 1968? Imagine legions of young activists making a "similar commitment to Buttigieg" by 2020. In my mind – or in the ear – generations X, Y and Z could organize meetings to train in imitate her wonderful speech strewn.

Okay, okay, I hear you already: Scottish, even by your picayune standards, it's a really trivial subject for a column. To which I can only answer in style, if not the exact words, of the captivating narrative of the warrior poet Wilfred Owen about a gas attack of the First World War: If last weekend you too were sitting reading at the door of an airport then swarm of MIT students who quickly began to love at the pace of an auctioneer; if you had searched in vain for auricles like a litany of similar ones exploded like mortars against your eardrums; if, in your desperate struggle for overweight sound, you too had stranded on distant seats, only to find them haunted by a horde of horrible children screaming like an apprentice hyena; Well, my friends, you would not repeat the old lie that says it's nice to hear young people speaking in their own language.

Ahem. But let me not be obsessed with my nonsense. After all, this column is supposed to be dedicated to Mayor Pete. There are other reasons to hope that his big announcement next week will, as expected, be an official statement of his candidacy. First, he is an eloquent spokesperson for the generations on whom we are indebted – and he talks about climate change and other issues of intergenerational justice.

As he notes, his contemporaries will have to face the long-term consequences of many decisions made today. He is also right when he says that the political process will only begin to respond to young people's political preferences when politicians begin to fear that young citizens will not vote them if they do not.

These voters have a huge interest in a more far-sighted national policy, and their voices and views must be heard in this campaign.

And as far as Mayor Pete is concerned, listening is a unlikely pleasure.

You can contact Scot Lehigh at the following address: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ GlobeScotLehigh.

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