Buttigieg is Harris’ best choice for vice president

It’s hard to deny the appeal of a swing-state governor as a running mate for Kamala Harris. But as the vice president vets her candidates, there is also a compelling logic to choosing a former small-city mayor and leader of a second-tier cabinet department.  I refer, of course, to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. My rationale is simple: Buttigieg is very good on TV, and that is a large part of the job description for a vice presidential candidate.

It’s easy to forget now, but back when President Joe Biden was forming his cabinet, there was considerable doubt about whether he could find a place for Buttigieg. What was the former mayor of the fourth-largest city in Indiana actually qualified to do? At the Transportation Department, he’s done a decent job, and he’s continued to be an in-demand television guest who was especially prominent during the debates over the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Making the leap from semi-obscure cabinet agency to vice presidency would be a bit odd, but it’s definitely less odd than the leap from South Bend to the DOT.

Indiana is not in play in November, but the benefits of a swing-state running mate can be overstated. In a practical sense, the main way that successful purple politicians run and win is to moderate their positions on some issues relative to the national Democratic Party, in ways that are calibrated to their home state. So Governor Josh Shapiro and other Pennsylvania politicians are more enthusiastic about fracking than most Democrats, while Senator Mark Kelly and other Arizona Democrats are more hawkish on border security.

There are lessons here for Harris, obviously: If she wants to win in Pennsylvania and Arizona, it might be smart to position herself as enthusiastic about fracking and border security.  At the same time, she is running for national office, and there are a bunch of different swing states. A small dose of heterodoxy might go a long way in one place, but in order to compete across the entire swing-state terrain, it’s helpful to moderate across a larger set of issues. That, in turn, runs the risk of antagonizing donors and other stakeholders.

If she were asking me — and, to be clear, she’s not — it’s a worthwhile strategy, and I’d advise Harris to do it. But my larger point is that there is no “magic” running mate. People vote for the top of the ticket, not the bottom. If a candidate can adopt the policy positions of a successful swing-state politician, then choosing him as a running mate may not be necessary. If she doesn’t adapt her policy, it’s not clear how much choosing that running mate helps.

Buttigieg’s gift of gab, by contrast, is a generically useful skill. Whatever platform you run on, you want surrogates who are skilled at explaining it. Whatever attack lines you decide to use, they should be well-delivered by people who can knife someone while remaining likable. And ideally, your surrogates should be able to parry tough questions, seem reasonable even to people who don’t fully agree, and know how to shift the conversation back to safe ground.

Buttigieg excels at all these things. One of the things he’s famous for is going on Fox News and preaching to a hostile audience.

Successful swing-state politicians are not necessarily good at this. The usual formula for swing-state success, in fact, is to try to stay out of polarized national media and highly polarized politics. The dream media appearance for a statewide elected official is to get on local news talking about a new community center or — like Shapiro — fixing a highway. This requires real skills, but it’s not the same as the parry and thrust of the national media.

Political junkies are familiar with governors such as Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Andy Beshear of Kentucky. But until this past month, I’d never seen any of them on national television — precisely because it’s smart politics to duck those bookings. Buttigieg has never held statewide elected office, but he’s been tested over and over again in the simulacrum of national media discourse. Practically speaking, he is the safest pair of hands available.

Back when it seemed as if Democrats might have a more open nominating process, I was skeptical of Buttigieg for president for the simple reason that he’s a member of the Biden cabinet. I still think the optimal play for Democrats would have been to achieve maximum distance from the unpopular incumbent and simply turn the election into a referendum on Donald Trump.

Now that the party has coalesced around Harris, it’s going to have to navigate this problem one way or another. And the best way to do that is with its best communicator at her side — someone who can share her pride at the administration’s tremendous achievements while also backing her up when she says she always favored swifter action on illegal immigration or whatever other break with Biden she wants to make.

In a sense, American politics has been distorted by four years of Trump’s nonsensical and often incoherent ramblings, followed by three-and-a-half years of Biden’s extremely light schedule of unscripted events. There are now lower expectations for a politician’s ability to communicate.  Harris’ public events since Biden stepped aside have electrified Democrats simply because, like the vast majority of successful politicians, she is more charismatic and articulate than the average person. And even though Harris is a dramatic improvement over Biden, she’s not the best communicator in the party. That title belongs to Pete Buttigieg — and that’s why she should choose him as her running mate.

Matthew Yglesias