21 Minutes in the Buttigieg Bubble

“Okay, we have to move fast,” one of Pete Buttigieg’s aides told me as the discoursing dynamo was finishing another cable interview on the last day of the Democratic National Convention.

Buttigieg stepped off an MSNBC set and onto the United Center floor. “I’m here to give you some much needed attention,” I told him. By “much needed,” I was of course being sarcastic: Buttigieg has been a rather relentless media presence in recent weeks, especially this past one in Chicago.

Buttigieg did not respond to my greeting, probably because at least 10 other people were trying to get his attention at the same time: his staff and security people telling him where to go; delegates shouting, “We love you, Pete!”; swarms of reporters chasing after him yelling things like “Pete, what does Vice President Harris have to do in her speech tonight?” Next thing I knew, Buttigieg was 20 feet ahead of me, darting up a staircase while convention-goers shouted and cheered at him.

[Jerusalem Demsas: Kamala Harris defines herself—but not too much]

Officially, Buttigieg is the United States secretary of transportation. But his far more prominent role of late has been as a sound-bite and surrogate sensation for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz (and at the expense of Donald Trump and J. D. Vance). According to his staff, Buttigieg plowed through more than 30 TV, radio, and TikTok appearances over the course of 96 hours in Chicago, along with 30 speeches to constituent groups (veterans, mayors, students), 12 sets of remarks to delegation breakfasts, dozens of scheduled and unscheduled drop-bys and meet and greets with various dignitaries and appendages, and one prime-time address on Wednesday night.

The next day, in the final hours of the convention, I was granted brief access to the inner swirl of this particular dust cloud.

“Keep moving, keep moving,” someone called out as the entourage wound its way through a clogged concourse area. This was quite an exhilarating and exhausting 60-second interval, for me at least, trying to keep up with the Buttigieg Bubble as it moved through a wall of political-celebrity shrieks and convention chaos.

“Pete, photo, photo!” “Hi, Peeeete!” “Woooooo!”

“Make room, make room! Coming through, coming through!”

“Peeeeete, over here, over here!”

We turned a corner. Buttigieg ducked through an open door, and I was directed to follow him. Suddenly it was just the two of us in a quiet holding space, an oversize closet adorned with chairs and empty soda cans. I was sweating and out of breath. Buttigieg is not a sweating-and-out-of-breath kind of person. Still, he admitted to me, “this is probably the least sleep I’ve had since before the kids started sleeping through the night.” (He and his husband, Chasten, have 3-year-old twins.)

Buttigieg has always been a gifted communicator, but he has become renowned lately for his subspecialty of jumping into pro-Trump media hornet’s nests and delivering tidy, often viral Democratic messages while simultaneously eviscerating his often hostile hosts. “Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear myself saying,” he began his convention-stage speech in Chicago. “I’m Pete Buttigieg, and you might recognize me from Fox News.” The crowd responded with an immediate and knowing roar.

[Franklin Foer: It’s Sorkin again in America]

Buttigieg emerged from his mother’s womb 42 years ago and was seemingly dropped straight into a political-media scrum. “I remember scampering into the living room in 1988 to hear Jesse Jackson’s convention speech,” he told me, recalling his 6-year-old political-junkie self. He organized West Wing watch parties as an undergraduate at Harvard; volunteered or worked for the Al Gore, John Kerry, and Barack Obama presidential campaigns; attended the 2012 convention, in Charlotte; live-blogged the 2016 Indiana primary for Slate; and later served as a delegate to the 2016 convention, in Philadelphia. “You know, some people geek out to actual rock stars,” Buttigieg told me in 2020. “For me, it was seeing people who I’d only watched on TV.” He singled out the thrill of once getting to meet Donna Brazile, the omnipresent Democratic operative and cable pundit.

Buttigieg is now very much one of those people you watch on TV. “Part of the reason I led with it last night,” he told me, referring to his Fox News line, “is that I’ve been struck by how many people come up to me and the first thing they say is ‘I love seeing you on Fox News.’” It happens on the street and in airports, he said, and usually with Democrats.

“Sometimes I might say the same thing on Fox as I might say on another network, but it’s more exciting for people to hear me say it on Fox,” Buttigieg continued. “Part of it is the knowledge that the viewers on Fox will not have heard that thing said before.” He said he tries to avoid hard-core Trump-loving hosts such as Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Jesse Watters. “To the extent that there’s a distinction between the news side and the opinion side—and that has grown fuzzier over time—I will try to engage on the news side,” Buttigieg told me. He does his best to coordinate his media regimen with the Harris-Walz campaign but also enjoys a fair amount of autonomy. “But I don’t want to overstate how much strategy goes into this,” he said.

Although Harris decided against naming Buttigieg as her running mate, his stint as an elite TV asset will continue at least through Election Day. He has been mentioned in connection with big jobs in a potential Harris-Walz administration (most often ambassador to the United Nations), and his continued media flexes should only enhance his candidacy, not to mention his fame.

Buttigieg gave up any claim to anonymity years ago, but attending his first in-person convention as a political star has been a bit disorienting. It might be fun, he told me, to wander unrecognized through the arena and take in the spectacle as the political gawker he’s always been, maybe even catch a glimpse of Donna Brazile. “I don’t know, maybe I could do that Mike Lindell thing, walk around in disguise for a bit,” he mused. (Lindell, the MAGA-loving My Pillow guy, had apparently donned a fedora, shaved his mustache, and infiltrated the convention.)

[Mark Leibovich: The DNC is a big smiling mess]

Alas, there was no disguise now, just a bustling retinue on a tight schedule. Time to dash, an aide told me. I thanked the secretary for his time—14 minutes in a little storage room, 21 minutes total inside the Buttigieg Bubble. “I’m following you out,” I informed him as he headed to the door.

“Get some color?” Buttigieg replied, media-savvy as ever.

Yes, I would be seeking some “color,” I confirmed. “Do something colorful,” I commanded.

“I’ll be colorful,” he assured me. “Are you coming in the bubble?”

Before I could answer, Buttigieg was in full motion, and I was suddenly trailing several feet behind as we proceeded again through the concourse.

He stopped for about 20 seconds to say hi to the Reverend Al Sharpton, and for about 30 seconds to pose for a photo with a little kid. I tried to move closer to hear their conversation but was promptly stampeded by a couple of cameramen.

By the time I reoriented myself, the bubble had moved on, and Buttigieg was out of sight—but never for long.