Pete Buttigieg

Thanks to billions of dollars in allocation money, the Transportation secretary is living his best life.

- ROSS BARKAN

These days, Pete Buttigieg is concerned about the future of democracy. “I don’t think it’s an accident that the last time fascism was fashionable in certain corners of this country’s political class, one of the things they said for Mussolini is he made the trains run on time—it was a transportation example,” he tells me in his spacious office overlooking the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C.

“Which by the way, importantly, was not actually true,” he is quick to add, his eyes suddenly widening. He brings up China and the narrative of “their order versus our chaos,” which the Chinese bolster with enormous infrastructure investments. “Part of what motivates me in this work is that the work-a-day things that we’re focused on, it’s right back to some really profound issues we’re dealing with in terms of what kind of country we’re going to be,” Buttigieg says. “It’s about whether democracy can deliver.”

Buttigieg, in his light-blue necktie and crisp white shirt, hasn’t had many acquaintances, let alone journalists, in his D.C. office since becoming Joe Biden’s secretary of Transportation in 2021. covid locked people behind Zoom screens, and Buttigieg, perhaps the administration’s most adept political animal, had been left to evangelize for transportation and infrastructure virtually.