What’s Up With Corey Booker?

My wife, Alice, is hard to predict. She once confessed to being taken with Bill Clinton, powerfully stirred by the magic of his presence. I don’t think that it was any one thing, but she said that when she saw him in Washington, she felt the charisma, the gravitational pull. It was that ineffable something that others have described and which is generally absent from her evaluations. To a degree I find almost supernatural, she almost never focuses on issues of presentation. The idea that Nixon lost to Kennedy because of his five o’clock shadow and a sheen of sweat is as bizarre to her as when I mentioned Nancy Pelosi’s eye thing. She hardly noticed when Pelosi fixed it.

I’m probably at the other end of the spectrum. Every oddity takes center stage. Yesterday it was the set of King Charles’ sleeves, his ravaged hands, the ring on his pinkie. It probably has to do with my own flawed appearance. Try not to think of this when you think of me, but if I pay attention to the strangeness in others it distracts me from the discomfort of being me.

But there’s hope for all of us, including Corey Booker. I have always wanted him to be my President. I love his politics and I love his story. He once carried a woman out of a burning house while walking the streets of his beloved Newark. The closest Trump has come to a moment like that is ignoring a man who collapsed in the Oval Office. The episode made for an astonishing episode where others scurry to bring the man to life while Trump stands stiffly looking straight into the camera. As with all things Trumpian, the truth is stranger.

The problem with Booker was an issue of optics. Look at any recording prior to yesterday and you’ll see a man straining to the limit. His face is an image of outrage and disapproval. His mouth is tight and his eyes bulge slightly so that you can see the whites at the top and bottom. He speaks too loudly without modulation in an unpleasant display of force and dominance. I don’t know about you, but it made me squirm. Why was Corey trying so hard?

Enter Corey Booker 2.0. He is relaxed and fluid, with a smiling demeanor. I saw it twice in twenty-four hours. The issues are still nothing if not consequential: war in Iraq, immigration overreach, and the general collapse of American civilization under a brutal, ignorant, whining man-baby. But Corey meets all of this with grace, charm, and an appealing demeanor of quieter authority. He could still mobilize to get you out of the fire, but without taking himself as seriously as death. At the end of the clip, I felt calm and reassured. The old Corey Booker, perpetually alarmed, had simply disappeared from the screen.

So how do miraculous transformations happen? Hell if I know, but I’m guessing it’s a speech coach. Either that, or the effect of his (still) new marriage. But whatever it is, he’s shot to the top of my list. Corey Booker for president, and Andy Beshear as his saddle pal. Hey there, citizens, it’s morning in America.