It Mattered That He Showed Up: On Pete Buttigieg's "Shortest Way Home"

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It Mattered That He Showed Up: On Pete Buttigieg’s “Shortest Way Home”
By Harrison Hill
MAY 28, 2019


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Having just barely “attained to the Age of thirty five Years,” the threshold mandated in the Constitution, Buttigieg has now turned his ambitions to the White House. The results have been promising: a May 9 Monmouth poll puts Buttigieg third in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, behind only Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Nationally, too, Mayor Pete is building momentum — as of last week, Quinnipiac had him ahead of party stars like Cory Booker and Beto O’Rourke. Everything can and will change, but it’s a credit to Buttigieg’s vision, intelligence, and thoughtfulness — and, certainly, his status as a white male — that he’s emerged, with such speed, from near-total obscurity to something like viability.

Does such a rise indicate Buttigieg has what it takes to unseat the aged cretin currently squatting in the Oval? I hesitate to guess. But whatever happens in 2020, Buttigieg appears poised to make a substantial contribution to American politics and public life — a fact evident not just from his galvanizing interviews and appearances, but also from his new memoir, Shortest Way Home: One Mayor’s Challenge and a Model for America’s Future. The book is clearly intended as a campaign document, and contains all the humanizing anecdotes and professional backstory typical of a political memoir. But Shortest Way Home is more than just a stump speech with a dust jacket. It’s a vivid and surprisingly lyrical portrait of a city and a man in transition — and an intellectual performance in which Buttigieg succeeds in making his play at the presidency seem entirely, thrillingly appropriate.

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It matters that he’s gay, that he showed up. I imagine I speak for many other gay men when I try to communicate just how much this means to me, how deeply moving it is to see a television anchor, speaking of Buttigieg, use a phrase like “his husband” — all without batting an eye. There’s a revolution in those two words, and that they just might apply to a major-party nominee — a president — qualifies as a miracle.

Of course, Buttigieg remains a long shot. But for now I choose to linger in the possibility, in the hope, that he and his husband — his husband! — might yet go to the White House. That they, and we, might yet win.