The mud is deep and the puddles are enormous on a raw December morning.
And in a way, he is.
Buttigieg is on a farewell tour of sorts after the Democrats November defeat.
This is a piece of infrastructure that serves 60,000 vehicles per day, Buttigieg says.
This bridge overall and the associated economic activity are expected to support over 4,000 jobs.
I joined Buttigieg on a recent trip through Ohio and Michigan.
In addition to celebrating fully-funded projects, Buttigieg had a larger point he wanted to make.
America has entered a new phase where many believe government is not only inefficient, but also actually evil.
Twenty-four hours with Buttigieg makes a counterargument.
Buttigieg heard about it and called her.
Now, theres a multimillion-dollar federal investment to make the street safer for pedestrians.
Four long years later, that skepticism has largely melted away.
He wanted hot but he got iced.
He let it go, too shy to ask for a new cup.
Still, the 42-year-old has changed.
(The long-downtrodden Lions are good now.
It was met with good-natured grumbling.)
Wow,The Thick of Itis one of my favorite shows, Buttigieg says.
We talked twice, first in Detroit and then in Cleveland.
Well, I was going to get to that later.Sorry, I didnt mean to rush you.
Conveying that to people seems to have been tough.
Early on, I started talking about our projects in terms of cathedrals.
Our bigger projects are the cathedrals of our infrastructure.
In fact, that was very much the norm.
Its hard not to chuckle about that.
Weve never had more connections, and weve never been more disconnected.
Just as weve never had more information and been less informed.
And our connections are in these strange and overlapping circles of belonging.
Many of which are online, right?
And the whole thing about transportation is it is still about the offline.
Youd been a small-city mayor.
As a mayor who focused on infrastructure, I knew a lot about streets, for example.
In some ways, it becomes more daunting the better you get to know it.
It was one thing to visit my first FAA facility.
The way things unfolded on the ground was very unusual there in terms of timing.
The department was there within hours.
But then the media firestorm came in about a week later.
Thats where just showing up was very important.
And it took longer than it should have to understand those dynamics.
But this time was just different.
If youre encountering a problem give me a call.]
A more public example was my Twitter dust-up with Elon recently, over the FAA.
And maybe they like what you have to say, and maybe they dont.
There was much talk about a new rail-safety bill after East Palestine.
Does it frustrate you that it didnt happen?Absolutely.
I consider it my single biggest piece of unfinished business at the Capitol.
This should have gotten passed more than a year ago.
It should get passed right now.
We got the Surface bill, that was the infrastructure package.
We got the FAA bill, but Congress would not act on the Railway Safety bill.
Whos the culprit here?Look, theres a rail-industry lobby that doesnt want this to happen.
You see it everywhere.
You see it in ocean shipping.
You see it in airlines.
But the railroads are the original.
They invented this stuff, at least from a U.S. perspective.
So, theyre good at gumming that stuff up.
But the biggest thing we can do going forward is to respond to this by improving railway safety.
Theres a lot to be learned from Sarah McBridesmasterful handlingof this on her way into Congress.
Because what she said was:What the speakers doing is wrong.
But I didnt come here to fight over that.
And she took some heat for that, internally.
Youve said that our tolerance for commercial-aviation fatalities is zero.
One or two happens in a year, we need to rethink everything.
But we accept roughly 40,000 automotive fatalities in a year.
One, the proportions.
In fact, its almost the same, roughly 40,000 deaths.
And Ive learned a lot on this job from conversations with my counterparts about that.
So, it tells you that we can and should do more.
Its not unusual for the richest person in a country to be very powerful in that country.
Its a little more unusual for them to have a government or quasi-government role, but not unheard of.
You have made a strong reputation as the Democrat who can go on Fox News and hold his own.
Is there a technique to this?I dont know if theres any magic to it.
A lot of its just simply going there.
And I imagine thats the viewer, and I imagine Im talking to them.
Everything seemed to be named after the 7th of November.
The main square, the avenue.
I kept asking, What is this?
And theyre like, Ah, something historical.
Because that was the day in 1987 when the leader took power.
But what you felt wasnt this overbearing.
Well, it was overbearing.
A lot of what made that authoritarianism work was that a lot of people were just checked out.
Or at least they created the impression of being checked out.
The newspaper didnt have an opinion page.
And thats even more dangerous, and I think that happens when politics is exhausting.
And politics is less exhausting if we imagine it as a dialogue.
First, you learn not to read your clips or replies.
Look, its two sides of a coin.
And then some people just dont like your stupid face.
Theres nothing you’ve got the option to do about that either.
This is immediately followed by Papa, come wipe my butt.
And you know what?
Thats what Im going to do.
Because that cant wait.
The memo can wait.
The White House will still be exactly where it is the next day.
