In a new campaign ad, Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg takes aim at free college and argues that his plan — which would scrap public university tuition only for lower- and middle-income students — is superior. The South Bend, Indiana mayor makes two arguments for his means-tested proposal: 1) that it would be easier to get a majority of the country behind his plan, and 2) that his approach is better because it doesn’t pay for the tuition of “the kids of millionaires.”

So what should we make of Mayor Pete’s contentions? An obvious response is that the children of the wealthy are far more likely to go to private colleges and universities than public ones, and that their taxes would go up to fund this and other progressive proposals. Free college would hardly be a subsidy to the rich. A deeper question, though, is why Buttigieg thinks providing free public services to all is a bad idea in the first place. Isn’t that just good old-fashioned FDR liberalism?

But perhaps it’s too much to expect such explanations from a thirty-second ad. Instead, maybe it’s fairer to look at an editorial published earlier this month in the Washington Post endorsing Buttigieg’s plan.