I think it's honestly quite fair. He was a presidential candidate and looks likely to run again in the next election - as a consolation prize he was appointed to the department that handles these things and absolutely failed to step up when a disaster directly in his domain happened.
I think it's fair that he's held to a higher standard than Ellen Chao who was pretty much just a nepotism appointment and, as far as I've seen at least, has no real desire to get into serious election competitions.
So we’re supposed to show deference to an appointee whose a member of a family controlling a Chinese maritime shipping company who happens to be the wife of the Senate Majority leader, because she’s just a patronage appointee?
So many regulatory changes were made during the Trump administration that directly benefited shipping interests. Chao isn’t some Washington DC housewife!
I don't think I ever said anything about deference? Chao was a complete BS appointment who was clearly just there to hand off contracts to family friends... Buttigieg was someone who wanted to be endowed as the chief executive and instead got a cabinet appointment - they came from being a mayor to having a role on the national stage and I honestly don't think they've really accomplished anything of note that would give them a boost in an upcoming election - this collision was not their fault personally but they responded to it poorly and hasn't been doing much else. I'm pretty sure Katie Porter has had a much larger impact on most people's lives than Buttigieg.
To clarify - when I said I hold them to a higher standard than Chao it's because my expectations were for Chao to wave in a series of corrupt defunding decisions and they ended up only being relatively corrupt - they cleared the extremely low bar I had for them. I had expectations about Buttigieg and they have not lived up to them.
I think it's fair that he's held to a higher standard than Ellen Chao who was pretty much just a nepotism appointment and, as far as I've seen at least, has no real desire to get into serious election competitions.