Mayor Pete Makes Pleasant Company in "Shortest Way Home"

I like Pete. He’s smart and sane, which is something you don’t see enough of in American politics these days. He can also write very well, and in a way, the book is a lot like him. The book is polite, proper and has a wide eyeness to it about the desire to serve America. He seems very sincere about wanting to be a public servant. His stories aren’t quite to the level of Barack Obama’s “Dreams from my Father”, where the backstory is almost mythical. Pete Buttigieg had a fine childhood. His parents were professors. He had friends growing up. Even when he comes out as gay, his parents aren’t exactly shocked and just want to know if he is planning to find someone to share his life with.

However, he also points out he was too young to realize his hometown of South Bend was struggling, and it’s that struggle that made him want to stay and help his town. The guy clearly has a passion for South Bend, Indiana and that is admirable, because he’s clearly a guy who could have escaped a mid tier city like a lot of people do.

Pete Buttigieg covers his childhood, going to Harvard, and even joining the military with a wide-eyed optimism mixed with a critical eye about what needs to change in American politics. This kind of book reminds you there are two factions of the Democrat Party. There’s the progressive, young rip down the establishment side, openly using the word “socialist” and being more in line with Bernie Sanders and the Squad. While Pete does talk about winning an award for writing an essay about Bernie Sanders, he is clearly more in the Joe Biden camp of the Democratic Party. He talks lovingly about the working class, and updating the industries of the workers instead of a big system blow up. It’s the pragmatic moderate wing of the Democratic Party. For example, he champions turning an old car factory in South Bend into a tech hub.

If you're looking for a lot about coming out of the closet, there’s not a ton in his book. He has a chapter or two talking about his boyfriend, and future husband, giving you some backstory on him, and himself starting to date in his 30s. They do make a charming couple, and both families seem to be very nice. He worried it would hurt his political future, but it really doesn’t. Though, he has a hard time working with a then governor Mike Pence, who put forward very homophobic policies, and made Pete feel the need to publicly tell the city he was gay in a newspaper editorial. 

This isn’t the most dramatic of candidate books. Yet, Pete is pleasant company, and a pleasant read. He doesn’t have an immigrant story, or a poverty story. His last chapter is pretty much a stump speech, where he makes a ton of very decent points deconstructing Trump’s message of “Make America Great Again”. He titled the chapter Not “Again”. The chapters are a little long, but overall, the book is worth a read. I like reading someone selling you on how smart they are, instead of trying overly hard to inspire you. It’s a nice change of pace. I suspect this is the guy Biden really wanted to pick as his VP.