Pete Buttigieg was not elevated to his cabinet post because he has tested experience with transportation. He was put there as a woke advertisement by a less-than-principled president trying to appease the culturally radical demographic in his party.
Our 21st-century civilizational battles are those waged between the popular sovereigntists and the globalist progressives who cling to every would-be "crisis" or "emergency" in a desperate attempt to attain and weaponize ever-more power.