Not so with every episode the author recounts. It took four years, writes Buttigieg, “or twenty, depending on how you start the clock.” The process may have been painful, but in the end, it was successful and had a happy ending. It would have been easy enough to act by fiat, writes the author, but opening the door to comment meant that every proposed renaming “met a new angle of resistance.” Enter lawyers, business owners, residents, and assorted other people before a downtown street, one of many bearing the name of a patron saint, was finally designated. The city had one such street already, but it was less than a mile long and had no buildings along its route that bore its address. So it was in the matter of a seemingly small order of mayoral business: namely, renaming a South Bend street to honor Martin Luther King Jr. The young mayor of South Bend, Indiana, now in his second term, explains what mayors do and offers ideas for the country as a whole.īeing a mayor, writes Buttigieg-“Budda-judge,” he writes of the phonetics, “was close enough and easier to remember than any other way we could think to write it down”-is a constant, grueling act of juggling constituencies while being sure they all have access so they can express their viewpoints and concerns.
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