Mayor Pete's answer about being in the military. [View all]

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Pete Buttigieg got this question from CNN's Jake Tapper: "If elected President, you would have the most military experience of a commander-in-chief since George H.W. Bush, who fought in WWII. Barack Obama didn't have any military experience. Does it matter? It's certainly an important part of your biography, and we honor it, but does it matter as a part of your resume for President that you serve?"

Pete: "I think so. I don't mean to say that you have to have served in the military to be eligible to run, but I do think that it brings a lot of perspective. First of all, again, you can never lose touch with why politics matters, with why it matters who's sitting at that desk. When you have had the experience of writing a letter and then putting it in an envelope marked 'just in case', and putting it where you know your family can find it, and packing your bags and leaving, you have a sense of the gravity and the weight of the decisions that are made in the White House. But there's something else about serving that I think the generation of George HW Bush and JFK experienced, which is that it brings you together with other Americans. When I got into the vehicle - a big part of my job was just driving and guarding vehicles on movements around Kabul, or occasionally between Kabul and Bagram. You know, when somebody got in my car, my vehicle, they didn't care whether I was a Republican or a Democrat, they didn't care if I was going home to a girlfriend or a boyfriend. They wanted to know if I was doing my job well and if I could keep them safe, and we learned to trust each other with our lives, even though our politics and our lives back home were so different. And I think we need to get back to that. It shouldn't require going to war to get that. But one reason I'm a big believer in expanding opportunities for national service is that we need more common experiences, in this world that's divvied up into Twittersphere bubbles and ideological echo chambers, we need more of those experiences that can bring us together even when we have nothing in common except the fact that we're American."