This image by Marc Nozell licensed under CC BY 2.0

Can Pete Buttigieg be president?

The short answer is yes. The U.S. Constitution answers this question for us in Article II, setting the requirements at being a natural-born citizen and at least 35-years-old. Buttigieg is both.

Perhaps 35 is an arbitrary number, but there’s no good reason to rigidly apply an alternative threshold when we’ve already agreed on one.

If Buttigieg’s age still concerns you, compare it to past presidents and other world leaders.

For historic context, Buttigieg is less than 10 years younger than Barack Obama or John F. Kennedy when they first ran. He’s also less than 10 years younger than Teddy Roosevelt was when he took office following McKinley’s assassination.

For contemporary context, Buttigieg wouldn’t even be the youngest leader of a NATO alliance country. That distinction belongs to Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who turns 33 later this year.

Moreover, Buttigieg will be nearly the same age President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Leo Varadkar of Ireland were when they took office (Macron at 39, Varadkar at 38. Buttigieg would be 39).

Later this spring, 38-year-old Pablo Casado could become Prime Minister of Spain. And Canada’s leading opposition candidates in this fall’s election — Andrew Scheer and Jagmeet Singh — are respectively 39 and 40-years-old.

And then, of course, there’s 38-year-old New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, whose name has become synonymous across the globe with clear, strong, moral, political leadership.

In other words, Buttigieg wouldn’t be an outlier on the global stage. He’d be part of a new generation of global leaders stepping forward to lead their countries through challenging times.

So hopefully we can put the age question to rest. It’s going to be alright. And in the conversations I’ve had with Democratic activists and voters, questions about Buttigieg’s age come up infrequently and raise few doubts.

Mayor, May Not

The more common concern I hear is some version of the “mayor-to-president” question: can someone make the immediate jump from mayor to the top job in federal government?

It’s a fair question. But I’m not sure it’s one that can really be answered one way or the other.

After all, there are some mayoral offices widely-accepted as being on-deck positions for future presidents. Two mayors of New York City are or were on the potential list of candidates this cycle, as was the current mayor of Los Angeles.

Granted, New York City and Los Angeles have populations greater than many states. But if we’re basing which mayors are in and which mayors are out on city population, where do we draw the line?

How about the mayor of Washington, D.C.? They’re often viewed as equivalent in rank to a governor, but the city’s population is less than 700,000. Is that the cutoff?

You could go through this mental exercise for hours, carefully thinking about different numbers, and still never come to a completely satisfactory answer given the number of considerations involved. Size is a relative concept.

For example, the South Bend I’m most familiar with is South Bend, Washington: Oyster Capital of the World, population 1,650. By comparison, Buttigieg’s South Bend, Indiana— population 102,000 and growing — feels like a metropolis.

The reality is that the size of population a public official serves is only one of a number of variables we consider when deciding whether that person can serve as president. What’s considered big and small is relative, which is why it’s usually not given much weight when comparing different presidential contenders who are governors and senators. There’s no particular reason we should apply a different standard when it comes to mayors.

Gut-Check

In my view, what the “mayor-to-president” question is really asking is a more gut-level concern: is Buttigieg ready?

Does he have the mental acumen, maturity, and wisdom to serve as leader of the free world?

Very similar questions were raised 12 years ago when Barack Obama ran for the White House. They were most famously posed in a 30-second TV spot that came to be known as the “3am phone call” ad.

Set late at night in a Suburbia, U.S.A. home as a young child sleeps soundly and a worried mother watches over her, the narrator of the ad asked voters to consider an important question: when a national security emergency inevitably breaks out somewhere on the globe, who do you want making decisions in the White House Situation Room?

Any doubts raised by the ad proved insufficient to halt Obama’s candidacy, and in the most famous Situation Room decision of his presidency — whether to proceed with the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound — Obama made the correct call.

Additionally, the 3am phone call is a rare occurrence, and major foreign policy choices are not meant to be made as snap decisions.

Someone far more likely to take an actual emergency 3am phone call would be, say, the strong mayor of a mid-sized American city. They don’t get to pick when the river crests or the historic blizzard rolls into town. They’re always on the hook when a tough call needs to be made.

It’s true the stakes of an extreme weather event and a national security emergency differ (though they’re headed towards becoming one in the same). It’s also true the intelligence assets and resources available to the decision-makers in these situations will differ substantially. No president ought to make these calls on their own, on the fly, without any input.

Quality Check

So what does qualify someone to be president?

I think that’s up for each voter to decide for themselves. Personally, I look for a combination of decision-making skill, a capacity for empathy, a vision for the future, and a sense of moral leadership.

Most importantly, I ask myself a question: do I trust this person’s judgement?

Some voters place a premium on certain kinds of experience. Perhaps they’re looking for years spent in Congress, or in federal government service, or direct involvement in foreign policymaking. These are all useful experiences to have.

If we’re comparing résumés, Buttigieg also has useful experiences — and some shared by few other candidates. He’s one of only a half-dozen 2020 candidates with service in an elected executive leadership role. His service in the Navy Reserve and the 7 months he spent deployed to Afghanistan make him one of only two candidates with experience serving in our armed forces.

But my point is not that Buttigieg is particularly more experienced than any other 2020 contender, nor that he possesses the perfect set of professional and life experiences. My point is that ruling Buttigieg out and ruling others in simply doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.

Ultimately, the question isn’t whether any 37-year-old or any mayor of a mid-sized city can be president.

The question is whether this 37-year-old and this mayor of a mid-sized city can be president.

I believe the answer is yes, and I don’t think you can make an intellectually honest argument that the answer is objectively no.

In accepting this answer, the next question raised is whether Buttigieg should be president.

This is a more challenging question, and my answer is not meant to cast aspersions or diminish anyone else on the Democratic side. We face an embarrassment of riches this primary season.

But after several weeks intensively listening, watching, and thinking through Buttigieg’s candidacy, I find myself at a place where I can give my answer confidently and unhesitatingly.

Should Buttigieg be president? Yes. An unequivocal, enthusiastic, go-shout-it-from-a-mountain yes.

It all boils down to my trust in his judgement, born out of two primary considerations: his leadership and, most importantly, his substance.