Pete Buttigieg is a smart man’s Beto O’Rourke: Kennedy

Would you like to meet my new gay boyfriend? He speaks eight languages, abhors the drug war and wants to pull out ... of Afghanistan. I know Mayor Pete Buttigieg has a lot of leftist deficits, but he is by far the most impressive Democrat who's kind of running for president.

Buttigieg was a naval reservist who served as a lieutenant in Afghanistan, so he has seen first hand how American foreign policy has veered wildy off her once-well-rooted tracks.

Buttigieg said during an interview, "We don't send troops somewhere because we don't like the regime. We send troops somewhere because it is the last resort to protect American lives. That’s got to be the threshold, and a lot of the things that started to go wrong at the beginning of this century, started to go wrong when we took our eyes off that standard.”

He's a liturgical conservative and married his equally luscious husband last January. He may be a white Midwesterner, but he makes no apologies for his straight-forward centrism and his intellectual heft makes him a smart man's Beto O'Rourke. Hell, a concussed and vegetative Larry the Cable Guy is a smarter Beto.

Mayor Pete is making the biggest inroads on social media and fundraising; he added almost a half a million Twitter followers since his CNN Townhall three weeks ago, and he's raised $7 million in the first quarter of this year. And he hasn't even officially declared his candidacy!

Sure Kamala Harris has raised a little over $12 million the same time frame, but she's a high-profile senator from a state of 40 million people. Buttigieg is the mayor of South Bend Indiana, population 100,000.

This man will gain traction if he can confidently make his case during the debates, and he'll be wise not conforming to progressive demands where he's already misstepped in favor of the Green New Deal and single-payer health care. He should stick to a solid diet of limited government Midwestern conservatism, with a side of authentic pride and some Hoosier ham.

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He has risen mightily in a short period of time, but like another flameout Indiana legend who never was -- former basketball star Damon Bailey who was scouted in the eighth grade and never fully materialized. He's in danger of proving the old adage correct: The brighter they burn, the faster they burnout. Good luck, Mayor Pete!