March 4, 2026

THIS IS THE HARDEST THAT THE ATLANTIC HAS EVER ATLANTICKED: Pete Buttigieg in the Wilderness. “He has a beard, a splitting maul, and a house in Michigan. Is that enough to convince America that he’s a man of the people?”

This brings us back to what we might call the IOP problem: Buttigieg has punched his card, has followed all the prescriptions, has received every honors grade and service patch one can get by the age of 44. But it turns out that lots of people, and not just jealous Ivy Leaguers, hate this. They hate pretensions of expertise. They hate people who work to become what they are not—even when they work to become better people, or better presidents. “I’m like you,” Gavin Newsom told a crowd in Atlanta in February. “I’m no better than you. I’m a 960 SAT guy.” That score is well below average. The audience cheered.

Buttigieg’s critics seem to fault him for the vaguest reasons, many of which come down to: he’s too perfect; he’s not authentic; he’s not a man of the people. It’s an odd line of attack. Is it possible to be too perfect? Is perfection a flaw? Social psychology has documented something known as the “pratfall effect”: the distrust of people deemed too perfect.

I swear to you this is a real Atlantic piece and not a Babylon Bee or old-school Iowahawk sendup.

Related (From Ed): Iowahawk does have thoughts on the Atlantic giving Buttigieg the full Annie Leibovitz treatment, though:

Posted at 7:34 am by Stephen Green