Opinion | Pete Buttigieg Says He’s More Than a Resume – The New York Times

This interview was conducted by the editorial board of The New York Times, which will announce its Democratic primary endorsement on Jan. 19. For noteworthy dialogues on...

Well, thanks for having me over.

Kathleen Kingsbury: Thank you for coming. So, we have heard you obviously talk about health care and climate and the Middle East a lot in the debates, so were going to try to ask you some questions we havent heard you answer in the past, and you will be shocked to hear that wed like to start with your time at McKinsey. You graduated from Oxford with sterling credentials. You could have pursued any number of career paths from there, including the choice you ultimately made to join the military. Can you walk us through why you decided to go to McKinsey from there?

Yeah, so the biggest thing was that I had a great academic education, but I was beginning to feel that there wasnt as much real-world experience mixed in with it. That in particular, I was eager to do as many things as I could, touching as many fields as I could, and to understand business in particular, about how people and money and goods move around the world and how that works.

KK: So you didnt just want to make a lot of money?

Whats that?

KK: You didnt just want to make a lot of money?

I definitely noticed the paycheck and that was important, too. I needed to make a living. Yeah. Im not going to pretend that that wasnt on my mind, too.

Binyamin Appelbaum: Wed like to talk about some of those real-world experiences. So one of the companies you worked for, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, you said that you were analyzing costs there, and after you completed that project, the company moved ahead with hundreds of layoffs and rate increases. Did you understand that what you were doing as a McKinsey consultant at that company that you were working to prepare for layoffs and price increases?

I had nothing to do with premiums, prices, fees or anything like that. Mostly what my team was looking at was overhead. Theres no way to know the relationship between analysis I did in 2007 and decisions they made in 2009, but certainly our focus was making sure that cost was under control there.

This video excerpt has been edited by The Weekly.

BA: You surely understood why a company like that would hire McKinsey to come in. Yeah?

How do you mean?

BA: When companies hire consultants, theyre usually trying to reduce their costs, right?

I think thats the only cost-cutting study I did out of all my time at McKinsey, so Im not sure its accurate to say that thats what most consulting work is.

BA: So it surprised you when that resulted in layoffs and price increases cases. That didnt seem like what you wouldve done if you had had that information.

I wasnt following news out of Michigan in 2009, so I found that out since, but yeah, Im not surprised. I mean, if an organization needs to cut costs, then that can involve layoffs.

BA: Another of your clients, Loblaws, the grocery chain, has since said that it was involved in the price fixing of bread during the time that you were analyzing grocery prices for them. Im curious first, just, did you analyze the price of bread for them? Is that part of your agreement?

Not in any detail. Basically the way my job worked was, they have about 50,000 items that they sold and I was creating and then crunching a database. What we would do is we would figure out, based on a years worth of sales, if they tried to cut a certain percent off their prices across a certain number of hundreds of stores, what would the impact of that be? So, bread was probably one of the U.P.C. codes in there, but I didnt pay attention to one product over another.

BA: When you were working at McKinsey, did you understand the companys purpose to be exclusively maximizing its own profitability? Did you understand the purpose of the companies you worked for to be exclusively to maximize their profitability?

Well, many of my clients as, you know, were public sector and nonprofits, so obviously their function is not about profitability. But yes, I worked for a company, a for-profit company.

BA: Do you think that that should be the sole mission of a corporation, though, to maximize profitability?

Well, I think that theres something to be said for the dialogue thats happening with, for example, whats going on in the Business Roundtable, but also this is where policy needs to come in. We cant expect corporate America to spontaneously change what it is about, without imposing different kinds of left and right boundaries.

To me, where the public sector and the function of regulation meets what private companies do is precisely to set up those kinds of boundaries. I welcome any time a company undertakes what is called corporate social responsibility, charitable activity or other factors in what they care about. I have been very interested to see the development of things like a B Corps, which has been a big conversation, especially around South Bend actually. Because one of the pioneering ones was a company called Better World Books that grew kind of up and around Notre Dame. But I also dont think we should be nave about how corporations behave unless they are regulated to ensure that their profit-seeking activities dont cause harm.

KK: In your view, if a company engages in criminal conduct, are the employees responsible for that conduct?

Well, obviously theres a whole theory in law about how liability works, but yeah, if somebody undertakes illegal behavior, they are as a general rule liable and should be.

BA: But bring that down to the practical level then: If youre working for a consultant to a company thats engaged in a massive price-fixing scheme, whats your responsibility?

Well, if you have anything to do with any wrongdoing, then youre responsible.

BA: You have criticized some of McKinseys more recent engagements with clients. Do you think that something fundamental has changed about the company since you left?

Its difficult from the outside looking in to gauge whether this reflects some kind of systemic shift or whether they just have a failure in terms of their guardrails. When I was there, there was a lot of talk about values. Firm values. Now, a lot of that was around impact and making sure that you put the clients interest first. Theres one story that they were proud of that I remember was part of our training. Where they had gotten some big contract to help a large multinational move into China, and it was going to lead to tons of work. But in the initial analysis, while they were doing their first round of work, the conclusion they reached was that this company shouldnt go to China at all. So, the story, at least the story as it was told within the firm, was that they gave the right advice, even though it cost them, right? So, you would hear a lot about a certain kind of ethic, but it was always about putting the clients interest first.

What you didnt hear as much was about whether what the client was doing had moral consequences that the firm didnt want to touch. I believe I remember a decision not to serve tobacco had been made by the time I was there. But my point is, there seems to be a problem there with assessing what they want to be associated with. Definitely with the ICE work, with the Saudi work, where you just say, this is a company thats good at helping clients meet objectives. But some of those objectives are not something we want anything to do with, and I think they need to step back and reassess what kind of client work they should take on in the first place.

KK: So you have portrayed a lot of the work that you did for McKinsey, like many analysts and junior staffers starting out in consulting, as mainly crunching data and making PowerPoint presentations and shuffling paper, more or less. Of course, there are also junior consultants and contractors who go to do government work, like Edward Snowden and Reality Winner, who see something that they think is wrong and decide to speak up. Can you tell us your opinion of Mr. Snowden and Ms. Winners actions?

Well, I think that we ought to have whistle-blower protections so that folks like that are not forced to choose between maintaining classified information and speaking up about wrongdoing. It may well be the case that were seeing the whistle-blower concept work in the way in which the current Ukraine process and investigation came about.

KK: So you think of Edward Snowden as a whistle-blower?

Not necessarily. I think he could have been, if that framework existed. Instead I think of him as somebody who divulged classified information.

KK: O.K. By some estimates, the federal governments work force is between 40 and 70 percent made up of contractors. What do you think of that ratio? What should it be ideally?

I think itd be arbitrary to just say theres some number that should be contractors. What I think we need to do, across our economy, and in some ways the federal government reflects this, is remove some of the magic between being an employee and being a contractor. So I think the biggest example were seeing of this in the new economy is, of course, with the gig economy, right?

This idea that you can drive for Uber and somehow not be a worker because you are contractor. A lot of this is about getting around labor standards. A lot of this is about cost-saving. Now, if we had a benefit structure in this country that was not only portable but also prorated, then we would be able to remove some of the magic that creates an incentive to have people be contractors rather than employees, and some of the incentives to be a part-time employer versus a full-time employer as well, for people who are employees on the books.

There will always be times, certainly in my administration, thereve been times when Ive turned, in particular, to law firms to supplement the work that our in-house legal team could do and other consultants with specialized expertise or some area where it just made more sense. Of course thats the case in the federal government too. But if its just a way to get around the obligations of having an employee, then I think it needs to be reassessed and the more that can be brought in house, the better. I guess what Im saying is we can make some changes in our economy and our benefits systems that would reduce some of the pressure to do that in the first place.

KK: This is just a yes or no question, but would you advise a senior at Harvard today to go to work at McKinsey?

Depends on the senior. I mean I get questions from people who are thinking about joining the military, as well as consulting companies, as well as political campaigns. Ill tell you when I was a senior at Harvard, they came around then, too. The standard that I had for myself was, your early 20s are such a precious time that you should prioritize what youre going to get out of your experience, way more than anything a paycheck can offer you in your early 20s and, for me, it didnt meet that standard when I was leaving college.

Pete Buttigieg speaking to a full house at New England College in Henniker, N.H. David Degner for The New York Times

KK: O.K. Were going to pivot to a new topic if you dont mind.

Mara Gay: Mr. Mayor, can you explain the mistakes that were made around your Douglass Plan? Why did your campaign falsely claim support from black leaders and then use tokenizing stock photos? Can you just talk about how that happened?

My understanding is that no false statement has ever been made about somebodys support for the plan. My understanding is that there were miscommunications about the public rollout of peoples names, all of whom had indicated at some point support for the plan, but not all of whom had reconfirmed that they were up for

MG: Right. They called it misleading.

having their names attached to that. So that was a process mistake, obviously, that led to changes in how we communicate with supporters and people that were in dialogue with about our policies. I dont know as much about the stock photo. I think it was on the website until September. I know that the vendor who was involved in running that part of the website or adding that kind of imagery has not been with the campaign for a while and obviously that was a mistake.

MG: How can you win the Democratic nomination, let alone the presidency, without the support of black voters? What do you make of the lack of support for your campaign from that community so far?

Well, I believe, first of all, that were earning support from black voters. I became mayor and was re-elected as mayor, largely because of support from every constituency, including the black community in my city. I believe that it is

Brent Staples: Whats the percentage of black citizenship there?

About 25 percent. I carried every district, including the minority-majority districts in our city, in primaries and generals, both times. I believe that anyone who proposes to be the president ought to be a president for everybody and also in particular, given what African-Americans are up against in the United States today, that the message of the Democratic Party needs to be one that speaks to black voters where they are. Its one of the reasons were being very intentional about that.

Now, I dont want to plunge in on polling numbers, but the last couple of rounds that came back suggested that the way that Im viewed among black voters is roughly the same in terms of the proportions as among white voters. But far more black voters say they dont know me or dont have an opinion. I think part of this reflects the fact, certainly something I hear from a lot of black voters, that folks feel not only abused by the Republican Party but often taken for granted by the Democratic Party. So the trust that you can build through quantity of time, through longevity, is very important. I dont have the kind of longevity that obviously some of my competitors

MG: So how do you overcome that?

So two things. First of all, the substance of what we have to offer. Im really proud of whats in the Douglass Plan. Its praised as the most comprehensive plan on dealing with systemic inequality put forward by a presidential candidate. Not, of course, because I sat in a room and thought up all these brilliant ideas, but because we had a lot of conversation and a lot of dialogue and fit our values to a plan to move forward. The more I communicate that plan, the better received it is and the better received I am.

But I also think before a lot of folks care whats in your plan, they need to know whats in your heart. And Im working in not just traditional campaign formats big speeches and TV appearances but also weve been doing more and more quiet and smaller engagements.

Our recent tour to the South, for example, had a lot of conversations that were between 20 and 50 people. Some of them very targeted around a policy issue like health equity or minority entrepreneurship. Some of it more about making sure that I was speaking to and hearing from folks who had been overlooked. So when we were in South Carolina, for example, we were with an almost all-black Democratic group in Allendale County. This is early presidential primary state, right? They hadnt seen a presidential candidate in more than a decade, and you could feel the extent to which they felt overlooked. Those kinds of engagements I think are very important, too. Its not just about obviously, our goal to win, its about deserving to win. I think that kind of dialogue coupled with all of the things that you do in traditional campaigning is really important right now.

MG: Your plans for tackling income inequality are not quite as detailed as some of the other candidates. For example, your policies on an inclusive economy say somewhat vaguely that youre going to knock down unfair barriers to entrepreneurship. What would that look like?

Sure. So first of all, we know that there are challenges to access to credit. In fact, virtually every small African-American-owned business that Ive visited in this campaign, I ask, howd you get started? Howd you get your start-up money? They always say they had to come up with the cash. Thats a pattern of course thats borne out on everything from how mom-and-pop businesses experience commercial banking to the well-documented fact of V.C. [venture capital] money, almost all going to a small handful of people and kinds of people in a certain number of places.

So there are things we can do about that. One thing we can do is capitalize CDFIs better Community Development Financial Institutions that have a much better track record of in turn supporting minority entrepreneurship. The way I would do it would be a 5X C.R.A. super credit for any of the larger institutions to flow funds into CDFIs.

Another thing we can do is direct co-investment this is part of our Walker-Lewis Initiative in businesses led by those who are underrepresented. Theres precedent for this with TEDCO in Maryland, and I think that kind of co-investment could be very powerful. Weve seen it in other countries you actually see it in the Israeli start-up community with state-supported grants.

Part of it is looking at other things that need to be reformed in credit scoring and credit systems generally, and then part of it is a little deeper in the chain of cause and effect, right? Where we know how much of the wealth in this country is inherited, not just among the ultrawealthy but just in general.

KK: Sure.

And how that flows through the implications for homeownership and access to education and health and all the other things that become barriers to folks being able to be empowered economically as they grow up.

KK: Who do you consider to be your most important advisers within the African-American communities, but also communities of color in general?

Well, first of all, our campaign team, we were about overall, I think were about 40 percent people of color.

I will turn to anybody from the local organizer in a given county that were traveling to in South Carolina to senior figures like Brandon Neal, our senior adviser on the campaign whos got a great track record from the Obama White House and the N.A.A.C.P. Or folks like our national investment chair, Swati Mylavarapu, who can speak a lot to some of those capital-formation issues. We try to make sure that Im listening to everybody I can learn from. I dont always start by getting permission for whether I can name check them, but a lot of conversation going on.

MG: Sorry. Just real quick, have you been to the museum in Montgomery?

I have. Yeah. Very recently, and it is haunting because it evokes things that Ive seen in places like Cambodia, and its on American soil. The way theyve constructed it is, I think, it forces you to understand the relationship between past, present and future. Thats, of course, all the brilliant work that Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative are doing. The fact that it arose out of activism on the death penalty, for example, in Alabama, a state that does not offer counsel past trial and, I think, maybe first appeal for the indigent even on death row, shows you that this is not just about marking something that happened. This is about connecting all of the patterns of injustice and surfacing the violent nature of that injustice in a way that forces us to contend with how its all connected.

BS: The death penalty as we know it evolved out of lynching.

Yes, as we know it, for sure. Which is, by the way, part of why Im calling for a constitutional amendment to end the death penalty. Anyway, it was a very powerful experience, and I think its very important for us to view not as an antiquarian kind of thing, but as a touchstone for what weve got to deal with right now.

MG: Thanks.

Aisha Harris: Mr. Mayor, you recently said that the failures of the old normal help explain how we got to Trump. Where does Obama fit into all of that? Because he was in office for eight years. I know you were misquoted at one point on that part.

You noticed.

AH: Yes, but Obama was in office for eight years. So where does he fit into the old normal as you see it?

Well, first of all, lets acknowledge that under President Obama, the Great Depression was avoided. Osama bin Laden was brought to justice. Health care was extended to millions of Americans. The auto industry was, was rescued in our country, is pretty good for eight years work. I also think that

BS: Thats the other thing that sorry to interrupt you. The other thing to that is the number of racist hate groups kind of quintupled under his leadership. I mean the mere fact of a black person in the White House brought that about.

Which is why we cant treat the Trump phenomenon as a blip or an anomaly. I mean this is surfacing things that as in a different way, the arrival of the first African-American president surfaced things that of course, had been here all along.

Were going to have to reckon with the extent to which Trump and Trumpism reflect a lot more about America than we might want to admit. Now, he was also, I think, capitalizing on a wave of populism that was responsive to what I would call a 40-year-long Reagan era that President Obama was the last Democratic president serving within. In other words, he was constrained by an atmosphere, a neoliberal consensus, where even for Democrats, most of the time, the only thing you could ever say you were going to do to a tax was cut it. There was this set of constraints that has dominated our political conversation leading to the conflagration that is Trump and Trumpism, and weve got to find our way out of it to something new.

AH: So how do you plan to sort of dismantle that old regime? Because in part, one of the issues that I think a lot of especially young people have is that you dont seem nearly as progressive or as revolutionary in some ways as some of the other candidates. Thats something a lot of young people are looking for. So how do you can you explain in a little bit more detail how you think about that?

Yeah. Sure. First of all, what Im proposing would make me the most progressive president in the lifetimes, not only of young people, but I mean, certainly in the last half century. Ill also say that it matters that we hold together an American majority that is progressive enough that it unlocks possibilities that were not available even 10 years ago during the Obama presidency. So it took everything that the Democratic Party had just to push through a health care reform in the A.C.A., invented by conservatives. Right? And that was a major achievement.

But that was as far as you could get during the constraints of that time. Where we are right now is that there is a powerfully large, not everybody obviously, but a powerfully large American majority. Not only to do the right thing on areas where Democrats have generally been trusted wages, labor, health but also areas where weve been on defense, like immigration, guns.

Holding that majority together is a big part of the task of the next president. Im not just talking about how to win an election. Im talking about how to govern this country. We need to have enough clarity of vision that we can see that the boldness of an idea is not measured only by how many people it can alienate, but by what it can get done. So theres always a more extreme solution on offer that sometimes Ill be competing with. But I also want to be very clear that what Im talking about would make the next era what Im proposing we do would make the next era very different from the one weve been living.

AH: Well, one

Thats my concern is to make that happen.

AH: So one final question. How do you convey that to younger voters? How do you counter the Mayo Pete memes? Are you familiar?

Im not. Do I want to know?

BS: You havent heard that expression?

AH: Well, mayonnaise as I think, and a lot of people think is really, really gross and there have been teens

BS: Wait a minute. [LAUGHTER]

AH: Lets not get off track.

BS: Wait a minute!

AH: Anyway, people feel strongly about mayo. There have been younger people theres a meme going around called Mayo Pete, and that I think does speak a little bit to the lack of youth support that you currently hold, even compared to those who are significantly older.

KK: A more generous interpretation is its bland.

PB: O.K.

John Broder: White.

Several others: And white. [LAUGHTER]

I get the white part.

AH: I didnt mean to imply that youre gross. [LAUGHTER] Thats not what I meant.

Well, first of all again, try to get folks to look at how big these ideas are. I mean Im talking to them about the biggest reform in the American health care system weve had since Medicare was invented. Im talking about a game-changing transformation on the availability of funds to go to college. Im talking about getting our climate carbon neutral by 2050.

That will test the limits of human capacity, and there will always be some folks who say, its not real. Health care reform isnt real unless you obliterate the entire private industry. College isnt real unless even the child of a billionaire can go without paying a penny in tuition. The climate change thing doesnt count unless its trillions more dollars than it is, and thats just not how I measured the bigness of an idea.

Continued here:
Opinion | Pete Buttigieg Says He's More Than a Resume - The New York Times