Pete Buttigieg published Shortest Way Home in conjunction with his unlikely run for the President in the 2020 Democratic primaries. He was the openly gay mayor of a small city that most people across the country gave any thought to only when their college football was playing a home game against Notre Dame. Plus, he kind of bore a resemblance to that goofy-looking guy on the cover of Mad Magazine: Alfred E. Newman. What the heck was this guy thinking?
He was thinking that—with the exception of being a white man—he was the Anti-Trump in every imagine way. As the 2020 election got closer, the disgust with the man in the Oval Office loomed larger and larger as the single most important issue at hand. If Trump was the opposite of Batman—as a certain popular meme characterized him—then any Democrat who could successfully position the image of being the opposite of Trump would, by connotation, be the Caped Crusader called upon to save the day. In retrospect, a much more effective title for an autobiography specifically designed to help introduce himself to potential voters during election season would have been “I am the Anti-Trump.” And as the book proceeds to reveal, it is absolutely true.
Anyone who cast a ballot for Joe Biden in the 2020 election less as a vote for Biden and more as a statement of terror at the idea of four more years of a Trump Presidency likely were actually casting a vote for a faceless, nameless image with Pete Buttigieg’s history and resume. At every point, the book reveals a man who stands almost as directly in polar opposition to Donald Trump as possible. If that is what voters wanted, they may have gotten with Joe Biden. They would definitely have gotten it with Buttigieg.
Rather than being born to privilege and inheriting fabulous wealth, his father was a literature professor. Rather than paying other students to take tests for him, he was valedictorian of his high school graduating. Rather than barely qualifying to enter what is referred to as an Ivy League school, but really isn’t, Buttigieg attended the iviest of the Ivy League: Harvard. And then he became a Rhodes scholar who attended Oxford Univ. in England. Rather than avoiding military service even when there was no mandatory draft, he voluntarily enlisted and served in Afghanistan. Rather than becoming infamous for never reading, he became editor of the Oxford International Review. Rather than filing multiple bankruptcies, he knew what he was doing when he went to work every day. Rather than multiple marriages and divorces and paying off porn stars to keep quiet about adulterous affairs, he is married to the first person he fell in love with.
Shortest Way Home is definitely a title that speaks to the overarching theme of the book: the decision to eschew riches laying elsewhere and return to one’s hometown to make it great again. But with each turn of the page, more information is revealed that further affirms the book’s true message: in every conceivable positive aspect, Pete Buttigieg is the opposite of Donald Trump.
