Buttigieg the presidential “flavor of the month,” how long will that last?

Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., seems to be the flavor of the month when it comes to the presidential election cycle we’ll go through next year.

BUTTIGIEG: Really a 'new' Obama?

As in people interested in picking a Democrat from amongst the dozen or so currently in the running to challenge Republican Donald Trump are focusing their attention on Buttigieg – who seems to be trying to build up the notion that he’d be the equivalent of another “Barack Obama,” somebody whose election would give them a “first” to support.

BUT WHILE BARACK was the first black man who managed to win the presidency, Buttigieg would be the first openly gay man (and a married one, to boot) who could be elected president.

For all those people appalled at the notion that Trump won the presidency back in 2016 on a campaign of undoing all the “firsts” that Obama had brought our society, I’m sure that picking Pete as president would seem all the more appropriate.

His election could be perceived as undoing all the harm that this Age of Trump has brought upon us.

We’re going to be getting a lot of Obama/Buttigieg comparisons in coming months. The Chicago Sun-Times pointed out this week that several of the people who helped raise money to get Obama started at the beginning are now on the Buttigieg train.

Does 'Mayor Pete" replace Obama, … 

IN FACT, ONE of them on Tuesday is staging a fundraising event for Buttigieg. John Atkinson told the newspaper he’s now fully committed to “Mayor Pete.” Part of the reason is that he figures Buttigieg is from Indiana – one of the Midwestern states solidly in the Trump camp.

Could Buttigieg be a key in Democrats taking Indiana’s 11 Electoral College votes away from Trump – along with those surrounding Great Lakes states such as Michigan and Wisconsin? That could well be the key to a Democratic presidential victory in 2020!

The talk has been offered up that both Obama and Buttigieg are Midwesterners – Great Lakes-types who aren’t tied to the East or West coasts. Both also have their ties to Harvard University.

Superficial ties, they may well be. But compared to many of the reasons offered up by Trump’s backers for supporting him (mostly because they like the way he offends the sensibilities of the majority who voted against him, but weren’t enough to win the Electoral College), they come off as all-too sensible!

… or just a better option to Trump?

I’M WONDERING HOW soon it will be before the reports start getting stirred up about how Buttigieg, in his first few weeks as mayor of South Bend, fired Police Chief Darryl Boykins.

He was the first black police chief, and there are those who think it was because Buttigieg chose to side with white cops who had their own racial hang-ups.

The New York Times already has reported on the issue. But how long until the news organizations that put the ideological spin on their reports (under the guise that it’s everybody else that reports “fake” news) get ahold of this – wanting to let us know that Buttigieg is some form of hypocrite unworthy of our support?

With the conservative ideologues desperately hoping they can stick a knife in the back of the Buttigieg supporters who’d be inclined to think he’s another Barack Obama.

OF COURSE, WE’RE nearly a year away from the primaries where people actually cast ballots for who should get the presidential nominations (it’s March 17, 2020, in Illinois). Buttigieg possibly could have long faded-away as a credible candidate by then.

SANDERS: Will he get Dem nomination?

Particularly if those people who seriously want Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont to be more successful this time around (I’m not amongst them) than he was in the 2016 Democratic primary manage to succeed.

If anything, what people need to be doing is looking to the future – finding someone with a vision to advance our society forward, rather than reverting to the past.

Perhaps not someone offering up visions of being an Obama successor. And certainly not somebody determined to keep wearing that ridiculous cap about “Make America Great Again” by reverting to a vision of our society that offers to exclude so many of us.

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Robert Francis Beto O’Rourke not an ethnic Mexican, yet that is his nombre

Down around Texas last year, one of the key political races involved that of Beto O’Rourke, a member of Congress from El Paso, trying to take down the politically unpopular Ted Cruz.

O'ROURKE: Could we have President Beto?

It didn’t happen. Cruz managed to narrowly win the election, with enough people deciding they’d rather have a Republican – even one as goofy and irrational as Ted.

WHICH MEANS THAT Beto O’Rourke may well have decided if he’s to have a political future, he’s going to have to work his way UP the political ladder – as in his announcement this week that he’s going to be one of the many political hopefuls seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for president.

It also means we’re likely to get the spreading of the ultimate in “phony” issues in coming months.

We’re going to be told that O’Rourke is a fraud, trying to pass himself off as being of Mexican origins even though he isn’t.

His family has its background in Ireland and Wales, and were amongst the many white people to flood their way into Texas in hopes of finding a better life.

AS TO THE nickname of “Beto,” it’s a common one in Spanish. It’s short for Roberto, or Robert in English. Basically, “Beto” could translate into something like “Bobby.”

CRUZ: Could his '18 victory lead to Beto rise?

As for why the O’Rourkes would turn to Spanish when it came to their kid, it was because he was named for his grandfather. And it means they were influenced enough by the heavy-Spanish population of the border region in which they lived – and which O’Rourke grew up.

So is Beto O’Rourke trying to pull off some sort of fraud in trying to pass himself off as a Mexican-American? Not likely. Personally, I don’t think anybody would believe it if he tried – particularly since amongst the other presidential hopefuls in the running is one-time San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro – who also served as Housing and Urban Development secretary during the Barack Obama presidency.

CASTRO: A 'real' Mexican candidate

But I have no doubt we’re going to hear a lot of trash talk trying to take him down.

PERSONALLY, I SUSPECT that what really bothers these people is that someone would think to look to Spanish culture as something positive. Most likely, these people are amongst the outspoken minority of the Age of Trump that really wants him to succeed in erecting that border wall.

As though they want to put up as many barricades as possible to anything existing from Mexican-American culture.

Even though if one is completely honest, the Spanish conquistadores laid claim to parts of what is now United States decades before the English did. I’m actually working my way through a book, El Norte by Carrie Gibson, that attempts to document this very phenomenon.

But such stories and anecdotes just don’t fit into their vision. I’m sure they see someone like Beto O’Rourke as challenging their very definition of what is a “real” American.

I’M SURE THEY’RE more comfortable with the one-time governor of Louisiana, Piyush Jindal, who when his family came to the United States from India tried to take on a “more American” identity and he renamed himself “Bobby.

JINDAL: Ideologues ideal of a proper foreigner pol

Maybe they think Beto O’Rourke should be more like Bobby Jindal – even though one could argue that all O’Rourke is doing is trying to have a political life under the very identity that his parents gave him.

And one in which the voters of El Paso elected him to posts on the City Council AND the 16^th Texas congressional district.

Which is my way of saying I think anybody who tries to make an issue of this is really doing nothing more than showing us their own absurd hang-ups, The best thing we could do is disregard it, and judge the potential of a “President Beto” on his own merits.

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65,844,610 – More than just Chicago will miss what we’re losing Friday

The day upon which Barack Obama departs our federal government's employ and becomes just another private citizen has finally arrived.
 

A Chicago bye-bye to Barack Obama

It’s Inauguration Day in the District of Columbia and we transition into the presidency of Donald J. Trump, which has the potential to undermine the eight years of the possibility of “hope” and “change” that many of us voted for back in 2008.

BUT WITH THE quirks of the Electoral College, the 62 million-plus people who wanted Trump in office actually outweighed the 65 million-plus who preferred the thought of “President Hillary Clinton,” let alone the other few million who went for a Libertarian or Green party person – or perhaps some other stray name that appeared on the ballot in certain states.

Not that I’m turning this into a diatribe against the nitwits who stuck our nation with the egomaniacal Trump as its leader. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of reasons to write such commentary in the future.

Because this would be a sad day on Friday even if it was the chance to transition into a presidential administration that did not see its mission as to undo what little was accomplished (largely due to strident GOP opposition) during the Obama years.

The past eight years have been unique from the perspective of Illinois and Chicago because there was that sense of one of our hometown people was actually in a position of authority.

SOMEONE WHO WASN’T going to use our city to score cheap partisan political points for himself.

 

A "President Hillary" wouldn't be the same

Which may be the most offensive aspect of a Trump administration – he’s already taken enough cheap shots at Chicago to last a four-year presidential term; and he hasn’t even started that term yet!

We’re no longer going to have someone in office who comprehends the sense of neighborhood that makes up Chicago, or who realizes that there is a Chicago beyond the tourist traps along Michigan Avenue.

Potential to be "President Pot-shot?"

If anything, I’m sure there are those who found the fact of a Chicago president who settled into the South Side of the city was a unique touch. Living in that Hyde Park home, which actually is just across the neighborhood boundary in Kenwood. Not that most people ever noticed.

EVEN IF WE were transitioning from an Obama administration to a Clinton presidency, it would not be quite the same local touch. Even though Hillary herself would have been the first Chicago-born U.S. president who was raised in suburban Park Ridge.

Unlike any first lady because she WAS Chi!

For she left us for the east coast to attend college, then Arkansas to follow husband Bill through his own political aspirations. She became of elsewhere.

Just like Ronald Reagan, who some like to try to claim for purely partisan reasons as one of our own because he was born here and attended a local college, even though he left us for an adult life in California and never returned. The fact that spouse Nancy Reagan was a Chicagoan as a child added little to his understanding of our city.

For Ronald was the guy who gave us the “welfare queen” in the form of a Chicago woman, Linda Taylor, who managed to collect benefits while driving around in a Cadillac and had expensive jewelry and furs. Trying to claim that all welfare recipients were the same!

WE’RE COMING UP on the four-year anniversary of the death of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton; shot to death by a stray bullet fired in the Kenwood neighborhood. First Lady Michelle Obama was the one who famously said of the girl who lost her chance to have a significant life, “Hadiya Pendleton was me and I was her.”

 

Created the "welfare queen," can Trump top that?

Can anyone envision Trump or anyone in his circle identifying with Chicago, or anything significantly urban? Particularly Trump himself, whose own idea of Noo Yawk life is seen from that 69^th floor penthouse he lives in when not spending time at his gaudy Palm Beach, Fla., mansion.

This is a day of note because I do remember Obama from his earliest days in the Illinois Legislature, and I suspect none of the other local clowns whom I’ve written about throughout the years will have the ambition or talent to seek the presidency.

Friday is a day of loss for Chicago, and even a “President Trump” will come to realize that. Who's he going to blame for the next homicide in Chicago without Obama around when he makes the next of his Tweets from a twit!

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How vociferously will Trump resist the influence, allure of the presidency?

I see where President-elect Donald Trump is saying he doesn’t really want to live in the White House – he envisions being able to govern the nation from his high-rise luxury apartment in Manhattan, with trips to his Mar-A-Lago mansion in Florida and an occasional visit to that ugly tower along the Chicago River.
 

Will this replace the White House?

As though he can keep conducting himself as though he’s running his usual business interests. Does Trump secretly envision that the nation will be renamed from the "United States of America" to "Trump – the country?"

OF COURSE, THE sensible thing for us to do with such egotistical pronouncements is to chuckle at the naivete being expressed. I don’t doubt that the security concerns involved in protecting a chief executive of the nation will require Trump to accept residence in the presidential mansion in the District of Columbia.

Even though I’m sure Trump probably thinks the nation’s mansion is downright drab compared to the tacky level of gaudiness that exists at so many of his other properties, and may think Harry Truman had a point when he referred to the White House as the "crown jewel of the federal penal system."

Trump kind of reminds me of the statements that Barack Obama made in the early days of his presidency – when he insisted he and the family were going to be making regular trips to Chicago so as to revitalize themselves. They would need their Chicago fix.

Not that the man has never set foot in Chicago since becoming president. But practicality has made them into District of Columbia residents to the point where they openly admit they’re not returning to the city once his term ends in January.

THERE WON’T BE that final flight for Obama and family on board Air Force One to the Second City on Inauguration Day – which is what tradition would call for.

 

Presidential vacation home?

Although I suspect that the Trump-type of voters are probably snickering to themselves and saying Obama doesn’t deserve the perk – we ought to let him hitch-hike, then have him arrested for vagrancy on the walk home!

In short, there’s a lot of nonsense we’re going to hear in coming weeks as Trump tries to wrap his mind around the reality that he’s now going to be legally responsible for the fate of this country. He will be blamed for everything that goes wrong in coming years.

 

For when he deigns to visit Chicago

His legacy now is not going to be some garish buildings and being the “best sex” Marla Maples ever had (if you believe the New York Post). He’s going to have to start behaving like a serious human being – instead of an egotistical blowhard.

IT IS WITH that in mind that people are watching his appointments.

Some may be relieved he didn’t put New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (himself a blowhard) in charge of anything. Others are repulsed that Steve Bannon will have anything to do with our government – he has edited conservative websites and often gets the labels of “racist” and “anti-semitic” attached to his name.

But the one that intrigues me is that of Reince Priebus – the head of the Republican National Committee who took his share of abuse during the campaign from Trump for being amongst those GOPers who resisted the charms of The Donald as president.

A quick look through Google finds headlines from earlier this year reading Reince Priebus, other Republicans, denounce Trump’s indefensible comments about women and Reince Priebus condemns Trump on Muslim ban, amongst others.

 

Will he be first fired by 'President' Trump?

YET NOW, TRUMP is using the political operative to be his chief of staff – the guy who’s going to be in charge of the presidential staff and will be largely responsible for whether or not the Trump presidency succeeds at accomplishing anything.

Is Priebus feeling the “call of the White House” and can’t resist a chance to “serve his country?” Or does he just need a job that badly.

And as for Trump, is this a sign that he’s adapting to the political realities of being president? That he may try to conduct himself like a responsible human being?

Or is the reality that the instant Priebus does something to offend the president, he’ll become the first individual to get a “You’re Fired!” from the Trump administration?

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Hoosier governor for VP – could Pence become Trump’s political savior?

It would be intriguing if Indiana Gov. Mike Pence truly were willing to give up his current post for the chance to be one seat away from the presidency in a potential Donald Trump administration.

PENCE: Will Trump 'train' take him for better ride?

For the Roll Call newspaper in Washington, D.C., reported Thursday that Trump will pick Pence as his running mate, although Trump later said he would postpone his announcement out of a sense of respect for those killed in a Bastille Day attack on Thursday in Nice, France.

NOT NEW JERSEY Gov. Chris Christie. Not one-time House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia. Not even his daughter, Ivanka – whose name Trump has tossed into the rumor mill most likely to confound those people determined to influence his pick.

I have to admit the idea of Pence as the running mate makes some sort of sense – in a purely political logic kind of way. Even though I have to admit to seeing the humor in political columnist Ann Coulter saying the only reason Trump would say Pence now is so that when he really does name his choice, everybody will think to themselves “Thank God it’s not Mike Pence.”

But keep in mind there are those Republican types who are in with the GOP for social conservative reasons and they don’t find satisfaction in all of Trump’s anti-Mexican or anti-Arab talk or any of the other cheap rhetoric he has used to try to stir up dissent.

Because Trump is a wealthy Manhattanite who doesn’t show the same fear of, and bigotry toward, gay people that they do.

SOME GAY ACTIVIST types actually say Trump is a reasonable individual to do business with. He certainly hasn’t demonized them the way he has others.

So, in the sense that a vice presidential choice is meant to balance out a ticket, that is what Pence’s presence would do. It is why Pence spent the day Wednesday meeting with Pence while Democratic presidential challenger Hillary Clinton was in Springfield, Ill., claiming the mantel of Abraham Lincoln morality for herself.

 

GINGRICH: No political comeback for Newt?

For let’s not forget that Pence was the governor who signed off on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act – the measure that equated hostility toward gay people as being one’s Constitutional right to express and treated efforts to fight back against such bigotry as the real act of racism.

People could claim their religion as justification for their bigotry – which I always personally thought was a repulsive interpretation of religious belief.

BUT IT WAS written into Indiana law, and for a time last year it was Open Season on Hoosiers. The state was the ultimate butt of jokes – to the point where even Mississippi and Alabama had right to look down upon them.

As things stand, if Pence ran for re-election as governor, his support of that measure and willingness to sign it into law would have been a major issue to be used against him.

He would have faced countless questions about gay rights and the mood of the nation might well have turned against him, and the state that hasn’t had a Democrat as its governor for more than a decade could receive one now!

But if he goes on board with Trump, he will be appealing to that segment of the electorate who will view him as heroic. He could well be the guy who helps solidify Trump voter support amongst conservative ideologues – particularly those who think the whole “gay” issue is of crucial importance.

AS IN MEDDLING in someone else’s personal business ought to be a priority of government. But whatever! I’m sure some voters now hesitant about Trump will be swayed by Pence’s presence on the ballot.

Will Hillary make Mike Pence a moot point? 

It may be that Pence has a better chance of having a political future if he signs on the Trump camp and becomes the factor that boosts it to a victory over Hillary Clinton.

And if it turns out that the REAL majority of our society winds up deciding that the return of the Clintons to the White House is nowhere near as repulsive as the thought of the Trump brand being applied to the Oval Office, then what else did Pence really have to lose?

Other than campaigning unsuccessfully for re-election in places like South Bend, Terre Haute and Gary – the latter of which likely would have been extremely hostile toward him.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Mike Pence also has the political record that has tried to single out Chicago. Which probably ensures that the Trump camp has written off any chance of taking Illinois' Electoral College votes -- no matter what kind of cheap talk Trump himself spews.