To Galvanize, Not Polarize

2019 highlight: Pete Buttigieg greets supporters at a rally in Brooklyn on June 28th—fifty years to the day since the Stonewall Riots launched the modern gay-rights movement. The atmosphere was electric. The only time I've witnessed more civic joy was at Obama's inauguration, when an eight-year pall of ideology and cynicism lifted alongside the departing president's helicopter and America seemed to affirm that truth and science—and one's character rather than color—mattered.

The excitement as Buttigieg spoke was tinged, of course, with the heartbreak one felt over the contrast between this dignified leader and the status quo—roughly the difference between broccoli and arsenic. Between a Bach cello suite and a hippopotamus crapping into your ear. There was a palpable anxiety, in a moment of grave national and planetary peril, about whether the country would wake to the promise of this campaign and recognize that Buttigieg just might be the one best suited to answer the call of history.

Six months later, taking slings from left and right—and holding fast to his campaign values of respect, belonging, truth, teamwork, boldness, responsibility, substance, discipline, excellence, and joy—he leads the Iowa polls.