Pete Buttigieg for veep?

Frank Bruni asks us today to spare a thought for Pete Buttigieg:

In 2020, when he was still in his 30s and his main political credential was two terms as mayor of a Midwestern city with only about 100,000 people, he won the most delegates in the Iowa caucuses, placed a close second in the New Hampshire primary and all in all outperformed many seasoned members of Congress.

How? With almost peerless communications skills. He went on Fox News last weekend to scold Trump on broken promises and Republicans on the selective use of crime statistics. It went viral. He went on Bill Maher’s show about a week before that and explained that some Silicon Valley billionaires like Trump because … they like money! It went viral. Buttigieg is a jukebox of perfectly toned, perfectly shaped and perfectly crisp rebuttals and arguments. Punch in your selected topic and let the music play.

And who knows? Maybe he’ll be Harris’s surprise pick.

Like Bruni, I doubt Buttigieg is in serious contention to be Kamala Harris's running mate. Nobody seems to be in a mood right now to take a chance on a young gay guy, even though I suspect this would be a problem only with voters who aren't persuadable in the first place.

I have a soft spot for Mayor Secretary Pete for the same reason as Bruni: he's been a regular on Fox News for years, putting in the work and showing himself practically the only prominent Democrat who can appeal to the Fox audience. That's not a skill to be taken lightly. What's more, as Secretary of Transportation he's proven to be more of a workhorse than a show horse, despite his obvious ambition.

I'll bet he'd be a pretty good VP.