Aloha, dobry wieczór, and welcome back to The Best & The Brightest: Impolitic. Four years ago around this time, when Kamala Harris was gearing up for her televised throwdown with sitting vice president and former Indiana governor Mike Pence, she enlisted her 2020 Democratic primary rival Pete Buttigieg to play Pence in debate prep. By all accounts, Mayor Pete turned in a stellar—which is to say, robotically stolid, ideologically rigid, and terminally clenched—performance as his fellow Hoosier. So it came as no surprise to learn last week that Team K has called upon Buttigieg to deliver another debate-prep command performance by standing in for Pence’s successor, J.D. Vance.

Since Harris’s elevation to the top of the Democratic ticket, few Harris campaign surrogates have been more ubiquitous than Pete—or more witheringly effective in skewering Vance. Which is one of the reasons I was psyched to sit down with Buttigieg last week for Impolitic With John Heilemann. Not surprisingly, Pete came to play; the interview was terrific, as you’ll see from the excerpts around which this week’s column is built.

🎧 Emhoff unplugged: If the canapés below whet your appetite for a full meal of Mayor Pete, you can find the entire interview here—along with last week’s other episode of the pod, which featured second gentleman Doug Emhoff and turned out to be the auditory equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet run jointly by Katz’s Deli and Russ & Daughters.

Emhoff and I met in 2019, during the early stages of Harris’s ill-fated primary campaign, and have continued a running offline conversation (mostly about our mutual devotion to an array of seminal Gen X bands, from Nirvana and Pearl Jam to New Order, The Stone Roses, and the Pixies) ever since. My hope, therefore, was that our cultural and generational ties would carry over to the on-the-record interview realm.

And, boy, did they ever. Officially slated for 30 minutes, our talk ended up running nearly three times that long and ranging widely across the topical waterfront: from Emhoff’s current role on the hustings on behalf of his spouse to his prospective one as the nation’s putative first first gent; his otherworldly composure when Trump, Vance, and the likes of Laura Loomer cough up Kamala-directed calumnies; how the feminism of Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder shaped his attitudes toward women; and whether Tim Walz is really the superannuated indie rock boy that he’s cracked up to be (spoiler alert—the jury’s out).

And now to the main event…

One of the additions to the list was, of course, Tim Walz. And the other was Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, current Biden cabinet secretary, and once and undoubtedly future presidential candidate. From the outset of the veepstakes, Mayor Pete—as a lot of people still refer to him and probably always will—was seen as a long shot to land the gig, in light of the glaring risks of a ticket consisting of not one but two members of an unpopular Biden administration. Yet Pete still made Harris’s shortlist, and not surprisingly: Among political professionals there’s a broad consensus that Buttigieg is, by a non-trivial margin, the most talented communicator in the Democratic Party this side of the Obamas.

To get a taste of just how good Pete is, head over to YouTube and sample his increasingly viral hits on Fox News, where he has made a point of regularly tangling with the network’s lineup of bad-faith blowhards, calling out their bullshit without ever losing his poise or his patience. His skills on the stump have made him—in a personal capacity, during his off-hours from his day job—one of Team K’s most valued and widely deployed surrogates. Add to that his keen mind, fierce ambition, aw-shucks Midwestern affability, and mind-blowing youth (he is, gulp, just 42) and it’s easy to see why the party’s cognoscenti believe that Pete is the one rising Democratic star with more than a decent shot at being president one day—that he’s close to a mortal lock.

Last week, Pete sat down with me to tape an episode of Impolitic With John Heilemann. Some highlights of that convo are below, and you can listen to the whole thing here. Shortly after we chatted, The New York Times reported that, just as he played the role of Mike Pence in Harris’s V.P. debate prep four years ago, Pete is standing in for J.D. Vance in Tim Walz’s murder-boarding for the understudies’ face-off on October 1. Because of the Times’s lousy timing, I wasn’t able to interrogate Pete about that juicy topic. But we did go deep on the state of the race, why he believes Harris has the stronger hand to play in the homestretch, the appalling hellfire unleashed on Springfield, Ohio, by Trump and Vance’s racist lies about the town’s Haitian immigrants, and what Harris and Walz need to do to seal the deal in the Blue Wall states. As always, this conversation has been lightly edited.

Pete Buttigieg: Good! The V.P. has been, I think, really clear in reminding us all that there are a lot of underdog qualities to this campaign, but also, I’d rather be us right now [than the Trump campaign]. The American people agree with the vice president on the issues that matter to them most. But we know that just because folks agree with you on the issues doesn’t mean that you get to win the election. You’ve got to earn that. [Kamala Harris] is out there doing that. Tim Walz is out there doing that. And a lot of other Democrats who really care about this—including me, when I get the chance in my personal capacity— are out there doing everything we can.

I run into a lot of Democrats who are bipolar about the election. On one hand, they’re hopeful and optimistic in a way they weren’t when Biden was at the top of the ticket; on the other, they’re also really nervous, like, freaking out. Do you battle with that kind of bipolarity? You want to be optimistic and energized, but you also want to be clear-eyed, right?

I think it’s really healthy to maintain that underdog mentality, to know that we’re gonna have to earn every vote. There are a lot of people we have to persuade to vote for us; there are a lot of people we have to persuade to vote, period. But the energy and momentum in this campaign—you certainly felt it at the convention—has been extraordinary. The other thing that I think is really notable is that every test that people set up for the V.P., she has gotten through flawlessly. Six weeks is the blink of an eye, but it’s also an eternity in politics. There’s going to be ups and downs; there’s going to be setbacks; it’s a roller coaster. That’s how campaigns are. But again, fundamentally, I’d rather be us for the simple reason that most Americans strongly disagree with Donald Trump’s decision to end right-to-choose and agree with her wanting to protect it. They disagree with Donald Trump’s tax cuts for the rich and prefer her middle-class focus. They want somebody who’s more pro-worker and more pro-union.

The more they learn about what she’s for, the more they like it. And importantly, about this Project 2025 stuff: As a policy guy, I thought there was no way people would care that much about a policy document that’s one thousand pages. Even I was surprised by how much that has become the single most debilitating scandal to confront the Republican Party—it was not a sex tape, it was not a criminal cover-up, it wasn’t even a leak of their plans, it was plans they published! And now I’m getting mailers in our mailbox in rural Michigan saying Donald Trump had nothing to do with Project 2025. [The Republicans] are really scared of that. And I think the fact that they’ve had to run away from their own beliefs is something that sets us up—if we do the work and reach every voter—for potential success.

Anyone with an I.Q. over 60 who watched the debate would have concluded that Harris kicked Trump’s ass. But Trump has spent the past week saying the opposite, and even calling himself the GOAT of presidential debates. My guess is, you don’t think Trump is the GOAT?

He’s goat-like in certain respects, but not the ones he has in mind.

To my eyes, his performance threw into stark relief the questions around his diminished mental acuity. This is one of my hobbyhorses, I will say. I had no problems with people questioning Joe Biden’s mental fitness to be president—or anyone else’s who wants that job. And there are a lot of examples of Trump seeming detached from reality, forgetful, confused, demented—to the point where, if you thought Biden wasn’t mentally fit to serve four more years, the same is true of Trump in spades.

Yeah, I think that’s right. Part of the reason I don’t want to linger on that is I think a lot of people have made up their minds about that, but have not been reminded that crime was up under Donald Trump and went down after he got beat, or that he really is the reason why I.V.F. is now being threatened. I just want to keep bringing it back to the issues. But, yeah, I think most of us would like a president who has a clearer grip on reality than he seems to be demonstrating. But more than that, I think most of us want a president who’s gonna do things that most Americans think are the right thing to do. And that’s not tax cuts for the rich and all the other stuff he’s actually about.

Fair enough, but let me ask it this way: Do you think there’s a case to be made that Donald Trump is not mentally fit to be president right now?

I think there’s something to that. I think he’s often confused. He often seems a little out of touch with reality. It’s getting worse, right? We’ve seen it kind of pick up if you compare to what he was like even a few years ago. I don’t think he made the most sense back then, but you definitely see that piling up. And I guess the other thing to think about—not just given his advanced age, but given that he managed to get impeached twice the last time around—is this really raises the stakes on the running mate. So one question I would ask voters is not just, Are you okay with the commander-in-chief and leader of the free world being somebody who seems to have trouble with the grip on reality?, but also, How do you feel about J.D. Vance?.

First of all, the only appropriate response to any political violence is to categorically condemn it. I think that’s what most people on both sides of the aisle have to say about what happened: that we are glad President Trump was unhurt and horrified that there was another attempt like this. I think the difference you see with what J.D. had to say is the difference between people saying, How do we stop this? and someone saying, How do we use this?.

The reality is that the overheated and violent rhetoric coming from the right has had very real real-world consequences, notably the fact that political violence came to the steps of the United States Capitol, leading to police officers being beaten and injured—a riot that led to deaths. And, of course, that’s far from the only example where we have violence being inspired right now by [the right’s] rhetoric. So if you’re really going to say, Let’s do something about the rhetoric in this country, that’s not a liberal or conservative thing, it should be an American thing to say that political violence is unequivocally to be condemned. We say that; common-sense Republicans say that. But Trump and Vance have trouble bringing themselves to say that.

Since the debate, Trump and Vance have kept doubling down on the conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio—despite the fact that it’s been proven to be totally baseless, which Vance now, in fact, admits. What’s going on here?

[Getting everyone] talking about people eating cats is one more example of something that [Republicans] do quite successfully: shift the conversation. Because the last thing they want to be talking about is the manufacturing recession that happened under Donald Trump, or Donald Trump’s ending the right to choose and seeming open to a national abortion ban, or any of the other things they just don’t want to talk about.

That said, there’s something really interesting and important going on with J.D. saying, basically, We made up a bunch of crazy stuff because that was the only way to get the people of Springfield the national media attention they needed [in the face of strains on the community due to immigration]. But the people of Springfield, including the mayor and Republican elected officials, are saying, Hey, we did not need the firestorm you just inflicted on us; that’s not doing us any favors; go away. [Vance] is their senator. What you did not hear from him was what a normal senator would say: These are my constituents. They have a problem. Here’s what I’m doing to help. [Vance’s approach has been] How can I use you?, not, How can I help you?.

The last thing I’ll say is about this targeting of unpopular groups to score political points. I do think sooner or later there will come a moment that resembles what happened at the end of the Red Scare, when Joe McCarthy was still sputtering about the communists being everywhere and [Joseph Welch] stood up to him and said, “Have you no decency, sir?” And all of a sudden, things shifted. I don’t know when that will happen. I don’t know if it’s happening right now or if it’s still years away. But there will come a time when anybody who participated in this kicking of vulnerable people while they’re down will not only have to weigh the morality of what they’ve done, but also pay a public price for behaving that way.

Two things. One is to assemble a political project that people want to be part of. That’s why the “joy” thing isn’t just superficial. It’s the idea that instead of death-match, doom and gloom, fight, grievance, all the stuff you get from Trump and Vance, it’s something more constructive and positive that people just want to attach their names and reputations and votes to. That’s the vibe level. The second is the policy level, to make sure people understand that the reason why the Midwest is seeing factory investments at a pace we haven’t experienced since the Kennedy administration has to do with her being right on policy. And I think that combination is the path to victory.

Look, I was there [in 2008] when Indiana voted Democrat [for president] for the first time since L.B.J. I’m not saying our ticket can carry Indiana this year, but if you think of the different candidates who could have turned Indiana blue, it wasn’t Bill Clinton and it wasn’t John Kerry—it was Barack Obama. So I think when you create something that allows people to be part of something bigger than themselves, the identity stuff can fade away.

And you have to connect the dots for folks. You can’t assume just because you deliver economic benefits to a community that they’re going to give you credit for it. And what’s happening right now is, whether you look at it in terms of policy or in terms of feel, there’s a proposition that’s coming together in this campaign—our campaign, her campaign—that I think ultimately resonates more in the Midwest. But the reality of a polarized country is that every campaign right now is a game of inches, and she’s going to be out there working to earn every inch of ground until the bell rings.