If it’s not the high road, it’s the lowest common denominator, Booker says.

Question: Can Barack Obama win by taking the high road?

 Cory Booker: You know I've heard my entire life that “Oh, you are too nice of a guy for this, you are too nice of a guy to play football, you are too nice of a guy for urban politics so and so for.” I think the big challenge in life is to their own self be true, to be authentically yourself and have that courage to unleash that on the world and be as an intensely you as possible and not live by fear but live by love, let your courage be almost reckless in your willingness to be who you are and Barack Obama, I applaud him for not standing in the world and trying to conform to it, but being authentically who he is and showing himself and saying “Vote for me as I am, not how my pundits tell me to be in order to beat her, Hillary Clinton. I am just going to be myself.” So, I reject that and I laugh, because I watch that a lot of things, I see Obama going through, I have gone through my own life. First they say he is not black enough, so black people aren’t going to vote for him. Then they are saying all he is too black, and I mean just the nonsense that we project of the pundits and politicians often project on people that are in the forefront is just frustrating. We have two phenomenal candidates, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama. The party is blessed to be in this crisis, really is many ways, I remember some presidential primaries where you might not have been as excited about the various candidates that where in the race. This is the wonderful thing. There are two great candidates, I mean I know the strategic machinations of the polls and so like what they worry about and their concerns, I can actually imagine what they are, but the process is going to play about, there will be one candidate, I hope that is chosen fairly and I believe that will be right. Now, I have no reason to believe otherwise and it’s going to be another spirited presidential debate in many ways between two excellent candidates McCann and somebody else. And I hope to this becomes a big election and not a small one. It is small elections that the whole conversation through out Swift Boat that trends and we voted for something, before they vote against it, all that kind of dialogue that does not serve our country, but if its about our bigger ideals, our bigger values as Americans and the big visions that these individuals have and we're choosing between the hope, the optimism, the plans and the pragmatism of the candidate versus another one, that’s gonna rise our country up to another level as opposed to, what I am often, as I expressed my frustration earlier about, often when we get, or we descend to our lowest common denominator.

Recorded on: 3/11/08