Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg ( BOOT-ə-jəj; born January 19, 1982) is an American politician and former U.S. Navy intelligence officer who is Presid...
Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg ( BOOT-ə-jəj; born January 19, 1982) is an American politician and former U.S. Navy intelligence officer who is President Joe Biden's nominee for the position of United States Secretary of Transportation. He was the 32nd mayor of South Bend, Indiana, from 2012 to 2020, earning him the nickname "Mayor Pete".Buttigieg is a graduate of Harvard College and Oxford University, attending the latter on a Rhodes Scholarship. From 2009 to 2017, he was an intelligence officer in the United States Navy Reserve, attaining the rank of lieutenant. He was mobilized and deployed to the War in Afghanistan for seven months in 2014. Before being elected as Mayor of South Bend in 2012, Buttigieg worked on the political campaigns of Democrats Jill Long Thompson, Joe Donnelly, and John Kerry. While serving as mayor, Buttigieg came out as gay in 2015. He married Chasten Glezman, a schoolteacher, writer, and LGBTQ rights advocate, in June 2018. Buttigieg declined to seek a third term as mayor.
Buttigieg ran as a candidate for president in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, launching his campaign for the 2020 United States presidential election on April 14, 2019. He became the first openly gay person to launch a major presidential campaign. Despite initially low expectations, he gained significant momentum in mid-2019 when he participated in several town halls and debates. Buttigieg narrowly won the Iowa caucuses and placed second in the New Hampshire primary. By winning Iowa, he became the first openly gay candidate to win a presidential primary or caucus. Buttigieg dropped out of the race on March 1, 2020, and endorsed Joe Biden the following day.In December 2020, President Biden named Buttigieg as his nominee to be Secretary of Transportation. He is the first openly gay Cabinet nominee in U.S. history.
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Barry Goldwater
Barry Morris Goldwater (January 2, 1909 – May 29, 1998) was an American politician, businessman, and author who was a five-term Senator from Arizona (...
Barry Morris Goldwater (January 2, 1909 – May 29, 1998) was an American politician, businessman, and author who was a five-term Senator from Arizona (1953–1965, 1969–1987) and the Republican Party nominee for president of the United States in 1964. Despite his loss of the 1964 presidential election in a landslide, Goldwater is the politician most often credited with having sparked the resurgence of the American conservative political movement in the 1960s. He also had a substantial impact on the libertarian movement.Goldwater rejected the legacy of the New Deal and, along with the conservative coalition, fought against the New Deal coalition. A member of the NAACP and active supporter of desegregation in Phoenix, Goldwater voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, believing it to be an overreach by the federal government—a decision that considerably anguished him. In 1964, Goldwater mobilized a large conservative constituency to win the hard-fought Republican presidential primaries. Although raised as an Episcopalian, Goldwater was the first candidate of ethnically Jewish heritage to be nominated for President by a major American party (his father was Jewish). Goldwater's platform ultimately failed to gain the support of the electorate and he lost the 1964 presidential election to incumbent Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson by one of the largest margins in history. Goldwater returned to the Senate in 1969 and specialized in defense and foreign policy. As an elder statesman of the party, Goldwater successfully urged President Richard Nixon to resign in 1974 when evidence of a cover-up in the Watergate scandal became overwhelming and impeachment was imminent.
Goldwater narrowly won re-election in 1980 for what would be his final and most influential term in the senate. In 1986, Goldwater oversaw passage of the Goldwater–Nichols Act, arguably his most significant legislative achievement, which strengthened civilian authority in the Department of Defense. The following year, he retired from the Senate and was succeeded by John McCain, who praised his predecessor as the man who "transformed the Republican Party from an Eastern elitist organization to the breeding ground for the election of Ronald Reagan". Goldwater strongly supported the 1980 presidential campaign of Reagan, who had become the standard-bearer of the conservative movement after his "A Time for Choosing" speech. Reagan reflected many of the principles of Goldwater's earlier run in his campaign. The Washington Post columnist George Will took note of this, writing: "We [...] who voted for him in 1964 believe he won, it just took 16 years to count the votes".
Goldwater's views grew increasingly libertarian as he neared the end of his career. After leaving the Senate, Goldwater's views cemented as libertarian. He criticized the "moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others [in the Republican Party] who are trying to... make a religious organization out of it." He lobbied for homosexuals to be able to serve openly in the military, opposed the Clinton administration's plan for health care reform, supported abortion rights, and the legalization of medicinal marijuana.
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