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Notes -
To be fair I think that even if Whitmer wanted the job, and was the most qualified, it’d probably be smart to still choose someone else anyway, and the same for Buttigieg.
The optics (u/dasfoo below is making a point to differentiate this from DEI, Perhaps that’s fair) of this just doesn’t work well.
Two women, that’s a very feminine government.
A woman and a gay guy, the right wing attacks about the decline of the west to DEI write themselves!
But I wrote below that I think merit and inclusion should be thought of as two axes.
Let’s say for the sake of the argument that Buttigieg is the most meritous candidate (tbh this is my opinion, if the game we’re talking about is to rhetorically dismantle your enemies talking points on national tv and flip it on them, he’s extraordinarily gifted).
But high merit pairs with low inclusion for him. He represents the Midwest but he’s likely to make straight independent and center right guys feel not represented by a woman/gay guy ticket.
Thus the inclusion axis dictates that it should be a straight white guy. And the electoral map dictates that he should be from a swing state to make that state feel included. When inclusion wins over merit, that to me is what we usually mean by DEI.
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