Pete Buttigieg is about to find out that when the reality of a candidacy is even worse than the caricature of it, the candidate is in big trouble.
Saturday Night Live’s Feb. 8 opening included a mock debate segment (see from 8:25 to 8:37 here) in which the fake Buttigieg admits that he “sounds like a bot that has studied human behavior by watching a hundred hours of Obama speeches. So let’s get #WhiteObama trending — and please, please not ironically.”
I missed it when this first came out, but it’s been all over Twitter in the past day or two: a side-by-side mash-up of Buttigieg using the exact same phrases, with virtually identical intonations and even inclinations of the head, as former President Barack Obama. It appears to be real. And it’s not ironic, but brutal. It makes Buttigieg look like a fraud and, overwhelmingly, like an empty suit.
Watch it for yourself. It’s devastating.
“This country was built,” both Buttigieg and Obama say, in the exact same cadence, in movements that began “in church basements.” Both say, “We can take the Senate” so that America again “shines like a beacon around the world … And this is our chance.”
Both say that the way to choose a nominee is “the way we choose any other election, by giving it to the person” who “gets the most votes” (Buttigieg) or “is in first place” (Obama). Immediately after that sentence, both, almost spookily, pause and then say: “Just a thought!”
Buttigieg comes off as the worst form of copycat. It’s particularly harmful to him because it plays into the exact doubts about him that keep popping up. The critics say he has no real substance, that he’s long on rhetoric while short on accomplishment or specifics, and that, yes, he’s trying to be the “white Obama” while, crucially, lacking both the gravitas and the authenticity that a majority of voters saw in the real black president.
In short, the impression is that, like the original nickname for Saturday Night Live performers, he’s a “not ready for prime-time player.” The difference is that unlike Chevy Chase, John Belushi, and the rest of SNL’s famous original cast, Buttigieg’s unreadiness isn’t funny. It’s just rather pathetic.
