Democratic Mayor Pete Buttigieg is running for president based on the remarkable achievement of elevating South Bend from the fourth best city in Indiana to the third best. A recent video of his visit to Iowa makes it clear that despite such an unimpeachable accomplishment, the 37 year old lacks the mettle to serve as leader of the free world.
In the video put out by his campaign, we see Mayor Pete spending an extended amount of time anguishing over what to order at an ice cream stop. Allowing for the fact that the campaign edited the video and the number of cuts, it took a minimum of thirty seconds for the mayor to order (another video this week showed Buttigieg taking 45 seconds to pick a slushee). The actual length of the encounter was probably somewhere between thirty minutes and an hour.
pete buttigieg ordering ice cream is me making any decision pic.twitter.com/LdJmeDGW0d
— mara (@maramercadante) August 18, 2019
Already, Mayor Pete has shown himself to be either an out-of-touch elitist or horribly indecisive. Every person in the world does the same thing in every ice cream joint they've walked into. First you scan the board, then you confirm that your favorite flavor is on the board, then you order that flavor. That takes five seconds, ten tops, if you're a slow reader. Worse, the video shows that Pete ordered after a couple, giving him ample time to figure out his flavor. Maybe the signs should've been in Norwegian.
So why is Pete taking so long? Well, when asked his favorite ice cream flavor last month, he responded, "For my and Chasten’s wedding, a local vendor called Outside Scoop made a flavor with Michigan cherries, local honey and chocolate and whiskey from Indiana, so I have to go with that one."
Oohohohoho, Mayor Pete is a fan of artisanal, locally-sourced ice cream. While the rest of us buy Neapolitan ice cream by the gallon, some waitress is telling Pete that her executive chef created his own unique helado tailandés combining his indigenous Chilean flavors with his experiences backpacking amongst the street vendors of Thailand. It's served with a smidge of red velvet chocolate and nutmeg, only $14 and it pairs well with the madeira.
So having scanned the ice cream board and finding no flavors with saffron, gold flakes, or chunks of swan, Pete is forced into what Dubya used to call a Decision Point. After floundering for what seems like decades, he poses a question to buy time. "I mean, chocolate almond does sound pretty good," he asks. "Does it have almonds in it?"
Does chocolate almond ice cream have almonds in it? Well, Baskin-Robbins' chocolate almond ice cream has almonds in it. Perry's chocolate almond ice cream has almonds in it. Friendly's chocolate almond ice cream has almonds in it. Turkey Hill's chocolate almond ice cream has almonds in it. Every chocolate almond ice cream I've ever encountered has had almonds in it, but maybe the good mayor has comes across almond-less almond ice cream!
"Yeah," an employee responds, no doubt holding back an "of course it does, you doofus."
Pete is now naturally forced into the position of getting the chocolate almond ice cream. Other flavors on the board included cookie dough, strawberry, black cherry, cookies and creme, chocolate marble, cherry nut, and black raspberry marble. Pete has made a terrible decision, and I challenge anyone to say otherwise.
Mayor Pete's ice cream gaffe merely proves that he's an out-of-touch university town elitist who crumbles under the slightest pressure. What America needs for president is someone like Donald Trump, who decisively knows what ice cream he wants, so much so that he orders for the rest of the table and realizes that while he should get two scoops, everyone else should only get one. That's presidential.