Peter Funt

Opinion contributor

If you were an early Barack Obama supporter a dozen or more years ago, you recall inching forward in your chair whenever he spoke. The words were so clear, the passion so strong, the message of hope so credible.

Now, you're fixated on undoing the tragic turn that made Donald Trump the 45th president. Winning is all that matters. Yet, you yearn for a candidate capable of lifting your thoughts and spirits to a higher level.

You don't care to debate whether "socialism" is as evil as some would say; you're tired of worrying about whether septuagenarians are too old to serve; you're fatigued by past voting records and decades-old positions that now have to be walked back. You search for a fresh dose of social and political wisdom.

I suggest you watch the video of Pete Buttigeg at a CNN town hall. If that piques your interest, as it did mine, read his book, "Shortest Way Home."

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Buttigieg, 37, has been mayor of South Bend, Indiana, for eight years. Toward the end of his first term he came out as gay, yet he won re-election with more than 80 percent of the vote. He’s a Harvard grad, a Rhodes scholar, an accomplished pianist, fluent in several languages including Arabic, and a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. He’s the son of an immigrant father from Malta.

Still, as we used to say in New York, all that plus a token will get you a subway ride. There are many skilled politicians with glossy résumés. So what?

Authoritative and logical and very young

Buttigieg might not have all the answers, but whatever is thrown at him by reporters or TV hosts or folks at a town hall, he handles so authoritatively, so logically, that you’d swear Donna Brazile had arranged to get him the questions in advance.

Is he too young? “We’re the generation that provided most of the troops for the conflicts after 9/11," Buttigieg said on CBS. "We’re the generation that’s going to be on the business end of climate change. And if nothing changes economically, we’ll be the first generation ever to make less than our parents. So I believe that no one has more at stake right now than younger people coming up.”

He added, on CNN: “I have more years of government experience under my belt than the president.”

Buttigieg's book is beautifully crafted. It might have benefited from some judicious pruning, but it's an engrossing autobiography — especially coming from an author with fewer than four decades of experiences to draw upon. He's so new at being in the public eye that he and his husband can't even agree on the pronunciation of their last name. (Boot-edge-edge or Buddha-judge are top choices.)

Buttigieg supports "bedrock Democratic values" and considers himself a progressive, while refusing to overreach with Medicare for All or the more unrealistic elements of the Green New Deal. He speaks of "economic fairness and racial inclusion (that) could resonate very well in the industrial Midwest, but not if they were being presented by messengers who looked down on working- and lower-middle-class Americans."

Although Buttigieg has yet to formally announce his candidacy for president, his exploratory committee has already obtained the 65,000 individual donations required to guarantee him a place in the Democrats' first debate this June, if he decides to run.

Not an obvious White House contender

Some elements of Buttigieg's résumé seem so ideally suited to running for office that you wonder when he began plotting his course. Fresh out of school, for example, he took a job at the acclaimed consulting firm McKinsey & Co.: "I would leave Oxford with a degree in economics, but knew little firsthand about the functions — from logistics to finance — that made the private sector operate."

As mayor of South Bend, with a population of roughly 100,000, Buttigieg has done a credible job of getting potholes fixed and designing a computer program to make the sewers function better. Unemployment is down, and the city's crumbling remains of failed factories are being transformed to serve the tech industry.

That makes this fellow a worthy local servant but not necessarily an obvious contender for the nation's highest office.

Beyond policy, successful politicians nowadays need an X factor. Obama's was rousing oratory. Trump's was slick marketing honed on reality TV. Buttigieg has a certain calmness and command of the issues that is particularly comforting in these tumultuous times. How far that will ultimately take him — and whether his destiny is now or somewhere down the road — remains to be seen.

Even so, as you watch him on TV and read his book, ask yourself: When was the last time a politician's words resonated quite this way? If you have to go back to the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, in February 2007 for the answer, then perhaps in 2020 Pete Buttigieg will be your guy.

Peter Funt is a writer and host of "Candid Camera."