Pete Buttigieg
Safety and security are the most basic job of government. I understand that - both as a mayor who works every day to secure public safety and reduce crime, and also as someone who deployed in uniform to Afghanistan because I believed joining the military was part of my duty to help keep my country safe.Collection: Government
Military service might sound like a totally different environment, but every experience you fall back on later, it makes you smarter. Why wouldn't that be true of the military, too?Collection: Experience
In my generation, thankfully, as somebody who served in the Afghanistan War, would have served in the Iraq War, if called to do so - was also strongly against the Iraq War, from the beginning - I'm so thankful that we live in a moment that we can honor the troops separately from policy.Collection: Thankful
Greatness will come by looking forward - untethered from the politics of the past and anchored by our shared values - and by changing our nation's future.Collection: Politics
In local government, it's very clear to your customers - your citizens - whether or not you're delivering. Either that pothole gets filled in, or it doesn't. The results are very much on display, and that creates a very healthy pressure to innovate.Collection: Government
The Electoral College needs to go, because it's made our society less and less democratic.Collection: Society
The old line of thought used to be that local government is the bush leagues.Collection: Government
'Freedom' means a lot to conservatives, but they have such a narrow sense of what it means. They think a lot about freedom from - freedom from government, freedom from regulation - and precious little about freedom to. Freedom to is absolutely something that has to be safeguarded by good government, just as it could be impaired by bad government.Collection: Government
One respect in which I'm very much my father's son is how I feel about Joyce. 'Ulysses' is very much about daily life, when you get into this other guy's life and you learn about the things he cares about, and why he cares about them. And then, very indirectly, very subtly, you learn why politics has impacted his life, too.Collection: Respect
The first news event I understood as a small child was the loss of the space shuttle Challenger, which President Reagan eloquently mourned from the Oval that evening.Collection: Space
We need to intentionally invest in health, in home ownership, in entrepreneurship, in access to democracy, in economic empowerment. If we don't do these things, we shouldn't be surprised that racial inequality persists because inequalities compound.Collection: Health
I am not skilled enough or energetic enough to craft a persona. I just have to be who I am and hope people like it.Collection: Hope
I'm proud of who I am. I am proud of my husband and our marriage.Collection: Marriage
When I think about where most of Scripture points me, it is toward defending the poor, and the immigrant, and the stranger, and the prisoner, and the outcast, and those who are left behind by the way society works.Collection: Society
I hope that teachings about inclusion and love win out over what I personally consider to be a handful of scriptures that reflect the moral expectations of the era in which they were recorded.Collection: Hope
As the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, I see on a daily basis the impact of politics and policy on my family, neighbors, friends, and residents.Collection: Politics
I am a Democrat because I believe in protecting freedom, fairness, families, and the future.Collection: Freedom
Like anyone who follows politics, I am sometimes mesmerized by the twisted and relentless drama playing out in Washington. But I also know about the price of distraction - the consequences of our attention being diverted from how politics affects daily life.Collection: Politics
My marriage to Chasten has made me a better man.Collection: Marriage
It's time to join the ranks of nations that have put the ugliness of capital punishment behind them.
Being gay isn't something you choose, but you do face choices about whether and how to discuss it.
As we see dislocation and disruption in certain parts of the country, from rural areas to my home in the industrial Midwest, and in the economy, this leads to a kind of disorientation and loss of community and identity. That void can be filled through constructive and positive things, like community involvement or family.
The challenge in confronting Trump is that there are certain things that he does that that you have to respond to, just morally. When he lies, you've got to correct the lie, which will keep you busy because he does it so often. When he does something wrong, you've got to point to it.
I kept up top grades, and by senior year, a flow of mailed college recruiting brochures accumulated into an avalanche on our dining room table.
You're not free if you can't marry the person you love because a county clerk is imposing his or her interpretation of religion on you.
I think a lot about intergenerational justice. Short-term versus long-term helps to explain a lot of the policy disagreements that happen between the parties, and I would argue that in most ways, we are the party with more long-term thinking.
The world is changing, but it is not changing on its own.
So much of what Christ's teachings are about have to do with the way that we take care of the least among us.
Physically robust infrastructure is not enough if it fails to foster a healthy community; ultimately, all infrastructure is social.
I just feel more comfortable with my sleeves rolled up.
Being the mayor of your hometown is the best job in America, partly because it's relatively nonpartisan - we focus on results, not ideology.
I don't have a problem with enhanced border security, perhaps to include fencing. I think the mistake is believing that border security is as simple as just putting up a wall from sea to shining sea.
Building a wall won't solve our border security challenges.
Presidents going live from the Oval Office have used that platform to inform the American public, and also to do one of the most important parts of their job: to inspire the best in us.
A lot of these so-called left positions are actually centrist by the standards of the American people, just not by members of the American Congress.
I've always been terrible at land navigation.
If I'm plowing the snow and filling in potholes, then I'm a good mayor, and if we fail to do that, I'm not. And it's got almost nothing to do with whether, when I come home, it's to a husband or to a wife.
I don't know how it plays in San Francisco. But I can tell you I came out, during a reelection campaign, in Indiana, while Mike Pence was the governor. And I wound up winning reelection by 80 percent.
As a consultant at McKinsey, I learned the value of data and the ability to shape that information into an answer.
Most people have trouble pronouncing my name, so they just call me 'Mayor Pete.'
As Democrats and progressives look to the future, we should remember our most essential values.
Wall-to-wall coverage of the political intrigue in Washington focuses on which Capitol Hill players won the daily news cycle, with barely any reference to the communities and lives where politicians' decisions actually hit home.
My surname, Buttigieg (Boot-edge-edge), is very common in my father's country of origin, the tiny island of Malta, and nowhere else.
Our neighborhoods are safer when there is trust between communities and the police who are in charge of protecting them.
Those of us who work in politics can only make ourselves useful if our heads are filled with things that we can contribute to the political space.
Being attentive to the things that add meaning to our lives alongside politics will help us inform our politics with the values that really do make America great.
What's worse: a president who is very faithful to an ideology that you find extreme, or a president who is very cynical and appears to have no ideology at all? Neither one of those things is great.
When I was fourteen, Mom and Dad sent me to St. Joseph High School, the Catholic school up the hill from our place, housed in a 1950s-era tan brick building sometimes confused for a light industrial structure due to the surprisingly high smokestack of its old incinerator.
By high school, I had traded my oversized, thick glasses for contact lenses, but my eyesight was getting worse every year, smothering my childhood aspiration of becoming an astronaut or, at least, a pilot.
In 'Palaces for the People,' Eric Klinenberg offers a new perspective on what people and places have to do with each other, by looking at the social side of our physical spaces.