Opinion | Pete Buttigieg on 2024 and the Crank Realignment

Pete Buttigieg has had a fascinating rise in politics.He went from being the mayor of South Bend, Ind., a small but noble town, to an unexpectedly competitive presidential candidate, winning Iowa in 2020, to secretary of transportation.

This year, he’s also proven to be one of the best communicators in the Democratic Party.So with an opportunity to sit down with him, I wanted to ask him a bunch of questions I have about the Democratic Party.And they begin with a concept that he wrote a book about in 2020 — trust.

The Democratic Party has lost the trust of a lot of people who once supported it.And it has endured a sorting of Americans by trust.

Donald Trump’s Republican Party is a party full of people who don’t trust the system, don’t trust the government, don’t trust Democrats.But it’s become much more than that.So how does Buttigieg think about trust? What does he think government — and particularly the Democratic Party — has done to lose it? What can be done to gain it back?I should say there’s a law called the Hatch Act that keeps members of the government from campaigning in their official guise, which is fine.

So, in order to talk with Buttigieg more widely, I was not able to ask him a number of questions I would have liked to ask him about his work as transportation secretary.But, given the circumstances, we had, I think, a pretty fascinating conversation.This is an edited excerpt from the conversation.

For the full conversation, listen to “The Ezra Klein Show” or watch the video at the top of this page....