The New Yorker – May 13, 2019

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RHODESRUNNER


I


n 1988, Spy magazine published a piece
by Andrew Sullivan titled “All Rhodes
Lead Nowhere in Particular.” In it, Sul-
livan made fun of the “bland eugenic
perfection” of the typical Rhodes scholar.
He was riffing on the old platitude “A
Rhodes scholar is someone with a great
future behind him.” Except—maybe?—
for Pete Buttigieg, the ascendant Pres-
idential candidate and millennial mayor
of South Bend, Indiana.
Before heading to England, in 2005,
Buttigieg joined the thirty-odd Ameri-
can Rhodes Scholars in Washington, D.C.,
at an orientation called Sailing Week-
end, which involved no sailing. The
twenty-three-year-old Harvard grad
introduced himself as Peter and car-
ried a small notebook in his pocket.
So had Bill Clinton—the only Rhodes
Scholar to have become President—
who is said to have taken notes about
everyone he met. (Bobby Jindal and
Cory Booker, who is also running for

President, were Rhodes Scholars, too.)
Buttigieg immediately stood out
among the standouts. Katharine Wilkin-
son, an author and an environmental-
ist, remembered a debate Buttigieg par-
ticipated in, on the subject of “democratic
policy, or the future of the Democratic
Party, or something.” She said, “I thought,
Holy shit, I’m out of my depth. This
guy’s, like, really freaking impressive.”
Marissa Doran, a lawyer in New
York, said Buttigieg was “a good egg”
who, when he wasn’t leading a poli-
tics-themed discussion group, liked to
“hole up and play Risk or Settlers of
Catan.” At Pembroke, one of Oxford’s
residential colleges, Buttigieg oversaw
the common-room bar. “He curated
this great collection of whiskey from
around the world,” Wilkinson said.
“When students took trips, he’d get
them to bring something back for his
‘whiskey library.’”
During their first winter there, But-
tigieg and some friends visited the Czech
Republic. “People were photographing
cathedrals or whatever,” Doran said, “and
Peter took these wonderful photos of a
stunning reflection in the mirror of a
car. He notices small things.” Though
conversant in eight languages—includ-
ing French, which he used in a viral mes-
sage of condolence after the fire at Notre

Dame—Buttigieg doesn’t speak Czech.
“But,” Doran said, “he’d learned a lot
about the city before we went. He took
us to every bookstore.”
Such was Buttigieg’s ardor for James
Joyce and Ulysses, Jeremy Farris, his old
Oxford flatmate, said, that he once
“came back from the market with a kid-
ney that he proceeded to fry, because
that’s what Leopold Bloom most en-
joyed.” Farris added, “Our kitchen, for
a few days, had the ‘fine tang of faintly
scented urine.’”
Justin Mutter also lived with Buttigieg

D.C., denied Trump’s motion to dismiss
the emoluments lawsuit brought by the
members of Congress. The clause was
intended to prevent corruption, by ban-
ning federal officials from accepting finan-
cial benefits from foreign governments
without first obtaining congressional ap-
proval. Trump contends that any such
profits he has received—ranging from
Trump trademarks being granted by the
Chinese government to Saudi-funded
lobbyists staying in Trump hotels—don’t
count, because he didn’t come by them
as a direct result of duties performed in
office. The court concluded that this ar-
gument is not only “inconsistent with the
text, structure, historical interpretation,
adoption and purpose of the clause” but
also “contrary to Executive branch prac-
tice over the course of many years.”
Democrats may be leading the House
investigations, but their queries are rooted
in historical practice and established un-
derstanding of the separation of pow-

ers. They are looking into matters of le-
gitimate importance, from how the
White House has handled security clear-
ances to obstruction of justice. The pur-
pose is not only to enforce accountabil-
ity but also to establish grounds for
legislation to avert future abuses. The
congressional authority to investigate,
which includes issuing subpoenas, has
been upheld repeatedly by the Supreme
Court. As a 1927 Court opinion explained,
“the power of inquiry, with enforcing
process,” has long been “a necessary and
appropriate attribute of the power to
legislate.”
What Trump denounces as “Presiden-
tial harassment” is, in fact, the means by
which our government, with its coequal
branches, works. But the way he talks
about those branches makes them sound
as divorced from the public good as he is.
He refers to the Supreme Court, with his
two appointees, as a venue in which he’ll
get “a fair shake,” which he doesn’t seem

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to think the lower courts offer. In March,
the Washington Post reported that fed-
eral courts had ruled against the Admin-
istration sixty-three times, “an extraordi-
nary record of legal defeat” that Trump
blamed on “Obama judges”—even though
a quarter of the judges are Republican
appointees, and the defeats resulted from
a sloppy approach to rule-making and
his own prejudicial comments on immi-
gration and other matters.
The former F.B.I. director James
Comey wrote an Op-Ed in the Times
last week, in which he noted, in part
about Barr’s behavior, that “accomplished
people lacking inner strength can’t resist
the compromises necessary to survive
Mr. Trump and that adds up to some-
thing they will never recover from.” Until
the next election, the scrutiny that Con-
gress and the courts are applying to Trump
may provide the best hope that our gov-
ernment will.
—Margaret Talbot

Pete Buttigieg

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