Thread by @ezraklein

A few impressions from my podcast interview with @PeteButtigieg. It seems very weird that the mayor of South Bend, Indiana is catching fire as a presidential candidate.

Until you talk to him. Then it doesn't seem so weird. open.spotify.com/episode/4uRxeq…

The most interesting thing about Buttigieg is his willingness to say reforming the political system needs to come before passing new policy.

“It's worth it because we're talking about setting the terms of the debate as they will play out for the rest of my life,” he told me.

The reason for that is the lesson of the Obama presidency, Buttigieg says, was “any decisions that are based on an assumption of good faith by Republicans in the Senate will be defeated.”

Republicans have radicalized the non-radicals.

That said, there's a real a tension in Buttigieg’s thinking between his promise to run to represent the forgotten middle of the country and his intentions to reform political structures such that the middle doesn’t wield wildly disproportionate power.

I pushed him on this a bit, and he pushed back. “Is it a deeply important as a matter of principle to somebody living in Nebraska that the American people can be overruled by the electoral college? Maybe. But I'd be a little surprised.”

I think he’ll be surprised by the pushback as these issues polarize. Reforming the electoral college, for instance, will be hard to do without a large number of smaller state legislatures getting on-board. And I think their power will prove an important principle to them.

One of Buttigieg’s lines that I liked was “how people feel about you is largely driven by how you make them feel about themselves.”

Democrats are often seduced by an overly materialist view of voter incentives that leaves them confused and angry when people “vote against their self-interest.”

Self-interest is bigger than just whether a tax plan benefits you (thought it's that, too). It’s whether you feel a politician respects you. Whether you feel your status in America rising or falling.

Buttigieg, like Obama in 2008, is very good at conveying respect.

Mayor of a mid-sized city is a longshot for the presidency no matter what.

But Buttigieg has an unusually well-developed theory of politics and political behavior, and a political style built very intentionally around that theory. That's rare for a politician.

There's much more in the full podcast conversation, of course, including a pretty interesting discussion of how he understands America's national identity. Listen, subscribe, etc. itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/the…