A few weeks ago, while Cory Booker was still regarded as a viable Democratic Party candidate, I asked this board who could look at the man and see presidential material. As I recall not a single person could, not even our friends on the left that bothered to reply.
I have spent some time thinking about the phenomenon that is Cory Booker, wondering what he sees in himself that the rest of us miss, and I think I've figured it out. Booker is like the slightly pudgy oversized kid in grade school that is zealously eager to get the teacher and his fellow students to like him, willing to do almost anything to bring him to their attention, willing to say what he thinks they want to hear, desperate to get them to ignore his oversized pudginess. He doesn't express any principles he holds as foundational beyond poll approved rhetoric, because the only real principle he has is the burning desire to be loved. I would put Booker's political demeanor like this: When he speaks he believes what he says, the exact opposite of him saying it because he believes it. He believes what he says. He does not necessarily say what he believes.
I think his shallowness engulfs the man. In the debate when Beto spoke Spanish before he could you could see the look of despair in his face. And when he spoke Spanish you could picture the gears turning, terrorized that he would screw up the few sentences he had practiced in front of the mirror a thousand times.
I think Booker is toast, has no chance at the nomination, stays in the race for unknown personal reasons, but partly because he so badly wants people to see the "real" Cory Booker, the one he has spent a lifetime cultivating for political gain. He's best suited as a mayor. He's a disaster on the national stage.
I have spent some time thinking about the phenomenon that is Cory Booker, wondering what he sees in himself that the rest of us miss, and I think I've figured it out. Booker is like the slightly pudgy oversized kid in grade school that is zealously eager to get the teacher and his fellow students to like him, willing to do almost anything to bring him to their attention, willing to say what he thinks they want to hear, desperate to get them to ignore his oversized pudginess. He doesn't express any principles he holds as foundational beyond poll approved rhetoric, because the only real principle he has is the burning desire to be loved. I would put Booker's political demeanor like this: When he speaks he believes what he says, the exact opposite of him saying it because he believes it. He believes what he says. He does not necessarily say what he believes.
I think his shallowness engulfs the man. In the debate when Beto spoke Spanish before he could you could see the look of despair in his face. And when he spoke Spanish you could picture the gears turning, terrorized that he would screw up the few sentences he had practiced in front of the mirror a thousand times.
I think Booker is toast, has no chance at the nomination, stays in the race for unknown personal reasons, but partly because he so badly wants people to see the "real" Cory Booker, the one he has spent a lifetime cultivating for political gain. He's best suited as a mayor. He's a disaster on the national stage.
