“The only thing that really matters is your ability to do the job”
Biden Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg may have been a little green to occupy the Oval Office when he ran for president in 2020 as the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. But, damn, he’s poised and quick on his feet. We noticed that again just the other day in his Charleston remarks on Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) trying to claim credit for infrastructure funds she voted against.
The media is determined to make President Biden’s age a 2024 campaign issue and not Donald Trump’s lies, criminality and weight. So when Biden misspoke twice this week in reference to the Russian war against Ukraine and said instead “in Iraq,” it was an “aha” moment the press — especially the right-wing press — pounced on.
Biden has a long history of verbal slips, but suddenly they are evidence for mental slippage. But watch Buttigieg pary CNN’s Kaitlin Collins’ question about Biden’s fitness:
BUTTIGIEG: All I say is I wish you could be in a room with him the way I often am, seeing how he is simultaneously focused on a big picture vision, and very focused on details.
I’ll tell you, we’ve had, for example, meetings on some of the work that we’ve been doing with rail infrastructure, where he winds up drilling in on questions so detailed. We have to go back and set up another meeting or pull in experts from Amtrak to help satisfy the president’s desire for detailed information and his focus on how that connects up into the bigger picture.
Look, this is an administration that has been extraordinarily effective. And, you know, one of — frankly, one of the cases that I made, back when I was running for president in an unusually young age, is that the only thing that really matters is your ability to do the job.
Right now, you have an administration that has delivered the strongest economic growth in terms of job creation of any president in American history, has delivered bipartisan infrastructure legislation, part of what we’re on the road working through right now, delivering great projects in places like Kentucky where I’ll be tomorrow, South Carolina where I was today, in ways that previous presidents, including the last administration said they were going to do but just couldn’t quite make happen, whether we talk about the CHIPS Act, the job creation that’s happening in manufacturing, the breakthrough for veterans that matters so much to my generation of post 9/11 veterans, in terms of dealing with burn pits.
At the end of the day, anybody in any job ought to be judged on the job that they are doing. And in just two and a half years, this administration, under President Biden’s leadership, has delivered more than many presidencies have been able to do in four or even eight years.
Buttigieg could be teaching a class.