On Friday, I sat down with Cory Booker for 90 minutes. It was, simultaneously, one of the most inspiring and maddening interviews I’ve done with a presidential candidate.
podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/an-…
podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/an-…
Inspiring because there is a moral radicalism and spiritual generosity to Booker’s politics that sets him apart from other politicians. Maddening because Booker shies away from drawing bright lines, his answers double back to blur out potential offense.
Booker lives his politics in a rare way. He lived for decades in a housing project to face the problems he wanted to solve. He’s led hunger strikes. He’s vegan. He builds coalitions that cause him real political friction. He takes hard roads.
But when Booker turns his politics turn outward, they lose clarity. He prefers to talk about morals than policies. He resists efforts to explain how his politics of radical love would manifest in practice.
An example. Booker, a one point, told me:
An example. Booker, a one point, told me:
“Barack Obama, God bless him, he played by the Queens rules, for lack of a better way of putting it. This president is breaking norms and traditions everyday to demean, distract, divide, degrade. If I'm the president United States, I'm not playing by the Queens rules.”
Okay, I asked: What will do you?
And Booker just wouldn’t say. “I'm not going to do that because part of it is the element of surprise,” he replied.
But there’s no element of surprise to preserve if you can’t win the office in the first place!
And Booker just wouldn’t say. “I'm not going to do that because part of it is the element of surprise,” he replied.
But there’s no element of surprise to preserve if you can’t win the office in the first place!
I think, in this interview, you can see both the promise of Booker’s campaign, and the problems that held it back. And I wonder how intertwined the promise and peril is:
Can a politics about love and conciliation work in a time of conflict and confrontation? Or does it collapse into confusion?
This is what tripped Booker up: How do you fight and heal simultaneously? How do you not become the thing you think is ripping the country apart?
This is what tripped Booker up: How do you fight and heal simultaneously? How do you not become the thing you think is ripping the country apart?
The race will be poorer for Booker’s absence. There’s something Booker was trying to say that I think the country would benefit from hearing. I hope he figures out how to say it more clearly, and we get more opportunities to listen.
And I think we might. A Booker VP pick would not surprise me at all.
