For much of this year (and some of last), I’ve been mocking the enduring political ambitions of the McKinsey technocrat Pete Buttigieg. As the mayor of Indiana’s fourth-largest city, he parlayed a presumptuous 2020 presidential run into a position as Joe Biden’s secretary of transportation. Seeking a way to remain politically relevant, he toyed with running for governor of Michigan, a state he recently moved to and to which he (unpersuasively) claims genuine attachment, then became more interested in running for Senate instead after incumbent Democrat Gary Peters declared he would not run for reelection in 2026.

But there will be no Buttigieg political campaigns next year. As Jim Geraghty notes in his Morning Jolt today, “former Secretary of Delayed Transportation Pete Buttigieg says he won’t run for the Michigan Senate seat because he’s (chuckle, snicker) focused on his 2028 presidential campaign.” Buttigieg’s own words are quite usefully demonstrative of his self-interest masquerading as public service: “I care deeply about who Michigan will elect as Governor and send to the U.S. Senate next year, but I have decided against competing in either race.” In fluent PowerPointese, he explains that he will instead “remain intensely focused on consolidating, communicating, and supporting a vision” of a “better alternative” to politics today.

Buttigieg elaborated on Substack. He first makes sure both to establish his Michigander bona fides and to remind us that we must all appreciate him more in the fullness of time by noting, as any normal human being would, that his Michigan residence is “within short driving distance of several transportation construction projects that count among the tens of thousands now being built with funds from the infrastructure package that I spent most of the last few years working on.” Then comes the promise that, despite not seeking office in 2026, he will be “be spending more time engaging both legacy and digital media in the service of a politics of everyday life, rooted in the values of freedom, security, and democracy.” A translation out of PowerPointese: “I’m not going anywhere.”

For all of this slickly packaged arrogance, and for all of his myriad political weaknesses, Buttigieg is at this time one of the Democrats’ best presidential prospects for 2028. His calculating behavior of late makes it obvious that he knows this, or at least wants to prove it. That possibility ought to terrify his party. “As a mayor, a military officer, a candidate, and a cabinet secretary, service has defined nearly all of my professional life,” Buttigieg writes. He’s right, in a sense: His career has been about “service” — to himself.