Nolte: Far-left ‘Atlantic’ Portrays Pete Buttigieg as Rural, Log-splitting Guy’s Guy

In today’s edition of Democrats Sure Got It Good, I give you the Atlantic’s desperate and sweaty attempt to paint the urbane and effete Pete Buttigieg as Paul Bunyon.

“Pete Buttigieg in the Wilderness,” reads the headline.

“He has a beard, a splitting maul, and a house in Michigan. Is that enough to convince America that he’s a man of the people?” asks the sub headline.

No matter how hard they tried, the Atlantic’s accompanying photo of Pete sitting in a local café still reminds me of a guy who will pick up a Starbucks latte on his way home to watch The Real Housewives of Atlanta.

The entire story is predicated on the hilarious lie that Lumberjack Pete has found his place in the world in, of all places, Traverse City, Michigan, a place filled with cafes, corner bars, and locally-owned ice cream shops:

For now, Buttigieg has chosen to wait out the tempests in Traverse City, the hometown of his husband, Chasten, a former schoolteacher. “We firmly became Michiganders at the end of 2021,” Buttigieg told me, when the couple bought a house there. From the vantage point of northern Michigan, he watches the progress of Trumpism with a combination of dismay and optimism.

“A day with the Buttigieges is a never-ending succession of wholesomeness,” writes the Atlantic. “When I went to their house, Pete had traded running the country’s transportation sector for a different type of traffic management, in the kitchen of his exurban home. The couple had begun preparing their children for a day of camp.”

“Papa got an axe for Christmas,” one of the kids says. “Technically,” Pete said, “it is a splitting maul.”

“Later we dropped the kids at camp, then visited Pete’s in-laws’ property,” the article continues. “Then came lunch at a shop that sold Cornish pasties—an empanada-like savory food, ‘quintessentially a UP thing,’ Pete said, referring to the Upper Peninsula, because ‘you can take them camping or hunting.’”

“We stopped at a bakery to pick up hamburger buns. The day ended with the same kid-related disarray that it began with: a cherry cone at Moomers Homemade Ice Cream, a rustic scoop shop[.]”

Oh, and Pete has a beard now, so you know, he’s a guy’s guy out guying throughout his wholesome guy days.

Yes, the glib nerd who attended both Harvard and Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship is this close to listening to Toby Keith in a 1981 Chevy pickup truck cluttered with empty beer cans and a deer rifle rack.

Politically, Pete’s only claims to fame are a stint as the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, an inability to connect with black voters, and a disastrous tenure as Joe Biden’s Transportation Secretary, during which he was able to install only eight electric vehicle chargers despite a $7.5 billion budget. Eight!

And this is not the first time the Atlantic has tried to make Buttigieg president.

What’s so amusing is how transparent both the Atlantic and Buttigieg are in this outrageously desperate effort to turn Buttigieg into something he’s not. Voters can smell a phony a mile away. A large part of President Trump’s appeal and his ability to dominate the political landscape, unlike any president in my lifetime, is that he is who he is. Trump flaunted his wealth, professed his love for New York, embraced gay marriage, and has never once attempted to mold himself into what the establishment expects a president to be. On paper, no Republican would support Trump. It’s the real thing that won everyone over.

When Buttigieg first hit the national scene, he was a disarmingly likable politician because he was always himself – a well-spoken, intelligent, openly gay, very ambitious, nerdy technocrat. This attempt to remake himself into something he obviously is not makes him look craven and ridiculous. A presidential candidate can get away with craven, but never ridiculous.

Remember John Kerry’s hunting expedition?

Remember Tim Walz’s even more ridiculous hunting expedition?

Mike Dukakis riding in a tank?

Phoniness sticks in a way a candidate can never get out from under because it invites the devastating politics of ridicule.

But Buttigieg and the Atlantic are too bubbled and sheltered to grasp that this kind of propaganda does more harm to a candidate than good.

You would think that if Trump taught American politicians anything, it would be just to be yourself.

Editor’s note: This story was corrected to reflect that Buttigieg was Transportation Secretary under former President Joe Biden.