On the campaign trail, Pete Buttigieg plays up his seven months in Afghanistan. But two years ago, he didn’t explicitly deny that his decision to join the military was politically motivated.
During a conversation, David Axelrod, President Barack Obama’s former chief campaign strategist, pressed Buttigieg, 37, on why he decided to join in 2007 while canvassing for Obama in Iowa. A cynic would argue there was “a political motivation” as a “resume enhancer,” Axelrod said.
“Not really, I mean, it was more of the family tradition. Back when I thought I was going to be a pilot, I figured it was the best way to get training, and then I learned that my eyesight precluded getting in that way,” the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, replied during the March 2017 interview. “I’ve reflected on that. The thing I asked myself was, if it was as damaging politically as it was actually helpful politically, would I have still done it? I hope the answer is yes, [but] there’s no way to know, there’s no way to run that experiment, I guess.”
Although Axelrod has offered Buttigieg advice in the past, including suggesting he wear a jacket on the campaign trail to appear older, he’s also been critical of the top-tier candidate. Axelrod criticized Buttigieg this month for analyzing the 2020 Democratic primary in an interview with Showtime’s The Circus as “unhelpful” and a “campaign strategist’s nightmare.” Buttigieg later walked back his prediction that the presidential nominating contest would come down to himself and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
“I don’t remember the exact context,” he told reporters in Iowa, adding his comments did not come out “right.”
Buttigieg, a Harvard University graduate, Rhodes Scholar, and former McKinsey consultant, became a Navy Reserve ensign in 2009, training to become a naval intelligence officer with a specialty in counterterrorism. The openly gay, married man took leave in 2014 during his first term as mayor to retrain for an Army-style role with the Afghan Threat Finance Cell based at Bagram Air Base and in Kabul. His great-uncle Russell Montgomery was an Army Air Corps captain before dying in a 1941 plane crash, Buttigieg wrote in his 2019 memoir Shortest Way Home.
Buttigieg’s White House bid received a boost last weekend with the release of a gold-standard poll. A CNN/Des Moines Register survey found Buttigieg was leading the crowded primary field in Iowa as the first choice for 25% of likely caucusgoers in the first-in-the-nation state, compared to Warren’s 16%. The November research reflects a 16-percentage-point spike in support since the poll was last conducted in September.
[Also read: ‘It was alarming’: Black leaders claim Buttigieg misled voters about the ‘Douglass Plan for Black America’]
