Pete Buttigieg is the most seasoned of the Democrats running for president, and here’s why. But first, a little history.

Fifty-five years ago President Lyndon Johnson stooped on a front porch with an impoverished family in West Virginia and it became the founding photo of the “War on Poverty.” Forty years ago presidential candidate Ronald Reagan declared that “government is not the solution; government is the problem.” Of course Mayor Pete was not a witness to either of those opposing moments in time, but I believe he deeply understands this internal tension which resonates within the American people.

Ever since those landmark occasions, we seemed to have lost much of the good will and good sense that has in many eras propelled our country to greatness at all levels of government. Now we are engaged in a presidential campaign which threatens to further demean the role of government in our nation.

As a Democrat I am generally proud of the field of presidential candidates. Many of them have excellent credentials and backgrounds. But Mayor Pete is a kind of “time traveler.” To me, as a former state senator and always a student of history, I find that he has a unique “touch” for the history of our country. And you need that sense of the past if you are to forge our collective path to the future.

In even the worst of times great presidents respond to the call of history and set a course for the future. Try to imagine establishing the transcontinental rail system and the entire system of land grant colleges during a domestic upheaval ... no need to imagine it … that’s what President Abraham Lincoln did during the Civil War.

Mayor Pete I believe is aware that even in the most trying times, the American people respond to calls for unity in a common cause. I’m sure he is familiar with Alexander Hamilton’s phrase in support of the new, proposed Constitution back then that there must be “energy in the executive,” that a president is the navigator for all of us as Americans.

Yet the president must recognize that the Founders set forth the Congress as Article One of the Constitution, and any president must recognize that fact, however great the challenge of dealing with Congress can be sometimes.

It appears to me that Mayor Pete throughout his life even to date knows — by learning, by living, by instinct — that there is a glory in the governing of this land and that we need to bring it back to the fore.

For all the turmoil in these times, we are blessed not to have lived through the American Civil War, but one of Lincoln’s phrases at the conclusion of that terrible time does apply. He spoke of “binding up the wounds” of the nation and moving forward. I don’t know Pete well, but I know the story of this nation and so does Pete. He is the navigator our country needs so that all of us can restore the good will we owe one another, that we owe to those who will inherit the land we love.