Buttigieg Splits From the Progressives on Foreign Policy

Pete Buttigieg’s foreign-policy speech started with a thinly veiled jab at President Barack Obama and his vice president, Joe Biden. For “the better part of my lifetime,” Buttigieg said, “it has been difficult to identify a consistent foreign policy in the Democratic Party.”

“We need a strategy. Not just to deal with individual threats, rivalries, and opportunities, but to manage global trends,” he said. And he warned that “Democrats can no more turn the clock back to the 1990s than Republicans can return us to the 1950s, and we should not try.” In case anyone had missed the point, he added, “Much was already broken when this president arrived.” Buttigieg offered plenty of criticism of President Donald Trump, of course, but his message was clear: I will be different from my Democratic predecessors.

But in the hour that followed, Buttigieg sounded very Obamaesque. He even began