Pete Buttigieg has emerged as one of the most talked-about can­di­dates of the 2020 elec­tion cycle. With his glit­ter­ing resume — Har­vard, a Rhodes, a stint in the mil­i­tary — and his com­pelling sto­ry as the young gay may­or of an Indi­ana city, Buttigieg has appeared on the cov­ers of Time and New York. While a small-city may­or may be an unlike­ly pres­i­den­tial con­tender, Buttigieg con­tin­ues mak­ing head­way, polling fourth in Iowa and New Hamp­shire in a noto­ri­ous­ly crowd­ed field. The New York Times reports that ​“vot­ers and donors in the par­ty” embrace him ​“with steadi­ly grow­ing enthu­si­asm,” not­ing the keen inter­est from Wall Street.

Is Mayor Pete someone who will challenge the status quo?

While Buttigieg some­times speaks the lan­guage of the Left on the cam­paign trail and will like­ly embrace some crowd-pleas­ing pro­gres­sive pol­i­cy plans, one chap­ter of his past rais­es the ques­tion: Is May­or Pete some­one who will chal­lenge the sta­tus quo?

After grad­u­at­ing Oxford, any career path in the world was open to him, and Buttigieg chose McK­in­sey & Com­pa­ny, the cult-like man­age­ment con­sult­ing firm. Buttigieg writes in his mem­oir, Short­est Way Home, that he became a con­sul­tant because he ​“want­ed to get an edu­ca­tion in the real world.” The real world exists in many places on this plan­et; McK­in­sey & Com­pa­ny is not one of them. Peo­ple seek to join the world’s num­ber one con­sult­ing behe­moth to secure a place in the ranks of the Amer­i­can elite.

In 1993, For­tune mag­a­zine put it this way: ​“These fel­lows from McK­in­sey sin­cere­ly do believe they are bet­ter than every­body else. Like sev­er­al less pur­pose­ful orga­ni­za­tions — Men­sa, Bohemi­an Grove, Skull and Bones, the Ban­quet of the Gold­en Plate — McK­in­sey is elit­ist by design.”

The firm has pro­duced at least 70 For­tune 500 CEOs. Buttigieg’s three-year stint is par for the course at an orga­ni­za­tion that takes pride in ​“coun­sel­ing out” 4 in 5 hires before they become part­ner. They then proud­ly join what McK­in­sey calls its ​“alum­ni net­work,” and what Duff McDon­ald, author of The Firm: The Sto­ry of McK­in­sey and Its Secret Influ­ence on Amer­i­can Busi­ness, calls ​“the McK­in­sey Mafia.” As they fan out among the world’s C‑suites and B‑suites, they remain McK­in­sey loy­al­ists. ​“There is no McK­in­sey bone­yard, in oth­er words; you’re still McK­in­sey after you’ve left,” McDon­ald writes. ​“Per­haps the only alum­ni net­work with more reach and life­long rel­e­vance to its mem­bers is that of Har­vard University.”

McKinsey’s inter­nal churn fits per­fect­ly with the company’s con­sult­ing phi­los­o­phy. McK­in­sey, which in 2003 advised 100 of the world’s top 150 firms, ​“may be the sin­gle great­est legit­imiz­er of mass lay­offs,” writes McDon­ald. ​“Its advice: Iden­ti­fy your bot­tom 10 per­cent or 25 per­cent or 33 per­cent, and get rid of them as soon as possible.”

McK­in­sey is also an infa­mous mer­ce­nary for the world’s most uneth­i­cal cor­po­ra­tions and author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ments, from Chi­na to Sau­di Ara­bia. McK­in­sey alleged­ly advised Pur­due Phar­ma, the prog­en­i­tor of today’s opi­oid cri­sis, on how to ​“tur­bocharge” Oxy­Con­tin sales and keep users hooked.

“We are now liv­ing with the con­se­quences of the world McK­in­sey cre­at­ed,” writes a for­mer McK­in­sey con­sul­tant in an exposé for Cur­rent Affairs. ​“Mar­ket fun­da­men­tal­ism is the default mode for busi­ness­es and gov­ern­ments the world over.”

So what kind of pres­i­den­cy would the McK­in­sey mind­set pro­duce? For­mer McK­in­sey con­sul­tant Anand Girid­haradas observes, in Win­ners Take All: The Elite Cha­rade of Chang­ing the World, busi­ness con­sul­tants ignore how polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic pow­er actu­al­ly works. ​“These elites believe and pro­mote the idea that social change should be pur­sued prin­ci­pal­ly through the free mar­ket and vol­un­tary action,” Girid­haradas writes. ​“And that the biggest ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the sta­tus quo should play a lead­ing role in the sta­tus quo’s reform.”

As McK­in­sey comes under heav­ier scruti­ny for its role in the crimes of gov­ern­ments and pow­er­ful cor­po­ra­tions, any ​“pro­gres­sive” who worked there and wants to be tak­en seri­ous­ly should have a rather crit­i­cal per­spec­tive. Buttigieg has shown no such reflec­tion. Instead, he calls his time at McK­in­sey his most ​“intel­lec­tu­al­ly inform­ing expe­ri­ence”; he left only because it ​“could not fur­nish that deep lev­el of pur­pose that I craved.” Buttigieg has said he didn’t fol­low the sto­ry of McKinsey’s Oxy­Con­tin push. On McKinsey’s Sau­di and South African gov­ern­ment ties, he said: ​“I think you have a lot of smart, well-inten­tioned peo­ple who some­times view the world in a very inno­cent way. I wrote my the­sis on Gra­ham Greene, who said that inno­cence is like a dumb lep­er that has lost his bell, wan­der­ing the world, mean­ing no harm.”

This excuse is remark­able. Buttigieg sug­gests that the savvy Har­vard grads who pop­u­late McK­in­sey are child­like inno­cents who sim­ply don’t notice they’re work­ing for Mohammed bin Salman.

It is not ter­ri­bly sur­pris­ing that Wall Street has embraced Buttigieg, a prod­uct of their world. But any­one who hopes to be pres­i­dent should have a bet­ter-tuned moral sense. They should have no doubt where they stand on that old labor ques­tion, ​“Which side are you on?” Buttigieg’s roots in elite con­sult­ing sug­gest, at best, he doesn’t know; at worst, that he’s cho­sen poorly.