What McKinsey really suggests about Pete Buttigieg

Be afraid

Pete Buttigieg.
(Image credit: Illustrated | JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg is under scrutiny for his stint working for the consulting firm McKinsey — perhaps because his record is so short that there is little else to discuss. After weeks of stonewalling, claiming he couldn't discuss details because he had signed a non-disclosure agreement, Buttigieg finally released vague details about his years at the company. He apparently did cost-cutting for a health insurer, price analysis for a grocery store chain, a study on energy efficiency for the EPA and several nonprofits, and something in 2009 for the U.S. government in Iraq and Afghanistan to increase "employment and entrepreneurship in those countries' economies." (I for one would like to hear more about that last one.)

Yet the details of Buttigieg's McKinsey career are less important than the sheer fact of that career itself. As a former consultant for the company writes for Current Affairs, McKinsey is a defining institution of modern America, an organization that leverages elite connections and a glitzy reputation to obtain bloated consulting contracts across the country. These contracts are then typically executed by wet-behind-the-ears Ivy League grads whose most distinguishing characteristic is a disregard for the welfare of the affected people or institutions.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.