Where do I start? Here is a Charlie Rose interview with the black, Democratic mayor of Newark, NJ. That description likely gives you a mental picture of Booker’s politics and demeanor but this guy smashes the stereotypes – as do many mayors.
Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark Charlie Rose, April 5, 2011 30 minutes
Booker has been mayor since 2006 and was a city councilman for eight years before that. His theme as mayor is to solve problems through “unity of action”. He isn’t just non-divisive, he lives e pluribus unum. We have forgotten how a leader sounds – take the time, listen.
Here are a few of his grippers:
· Rose asks how we got into our various messes; who did it? Booker says, “Forget who is to blame, I am responsible.”
· How do we make progress? Booker answers that we must break through the constant false debates; the bifurcated arguments. We cannot continue to allow the wingnuts to control debate.
· On the fiscal picture, state and national government must stop mandating local services and restricting local authority.
· Government worker benefits are unaffordable and taxpayer rights must outweigh union rights not the other way around.
· In the political system we have done things to move people away from the sensible center and push them to the far wings.
· We have created primary systems that are undemocratic. We should have open primaries.
Booker says that Washington DC Mayor Fenty didn’t lose an election; he lost a primary where the vast majority of citizens didn’t get a chance to vote.
· We have a system that selects for extremes. The way we draw district lines gives the two parties the ability to guarantee election results which in turn means that the legislators have no need to represent a wide spectrum of views – they are free to become extreme.
· Leadership is about appealing to people’s higher angels, telling the hard truth and never resorting to demagoguery or bashing the other side.
· Booker deeply believes in America. For some however, “liberty and justice for all” remains aspirational due to our broken primary education system.
· Booker’s dad was born to a single mother in a poor black neighborhood. Mom gave the boy to grandma and grandma gave the boy to the state. Booker’s dad became one of the first African-American executives at IBM but worries that a boy born into his circumstances in 1936 – the depression – had a better chance than a boy born into those same circumstances today.
· About Obama Booker says there is never going to be one person that can be our savior – that expectation of Presidents is crazy. We are the leaders we have been waiting for. We are the ones that have to change our communities and our neighborhoods.
This is how a leader sounds – compare this to the smirking Bush or the opposition bashing Obama. Compare this man to the current crop of GOP Presidential candidates – only Mitch Daniels stands the test and he says he’s not running.
Booker is not alone. Here are six other big city mayors, mostly Democrats who I think you might welcome in national politics over most of the folks already there. You will be most impressed by Bloomberg, of course, but Atlanta’s Kasim Reed is another impressive black, Democrat standout.
Michael Bloomberg & other Mayors Charlie Rose, March 22, 2011 48 minutes
Michael Nutter, Philadelphia
Michael Bloomberg, New York
R.T. Rybak, Minneapolis
Bill White, Houston
Jerry Sanders, San Diego
Kasim Reed, Atlanta
Common themes among these men and Cory Booker include these:
· Mayors are accountable. In ways that do not apply to politicians at the state and federal level, mayors are measured on results. They have to pick up the garbage and plow the snow, or else.
· Mayors do not have the luxury of partisanship or ideology.
· Cities should be our laboratories for change and it’s cities that bear the brunt of poorly conceived state and federal mandates.
· Government, leadership and problem solving should be local or as near local as possible.
In my view, we’ve had enough of flakey businessmen, super rich tort lawyers and community organizers in the Presidency and Senate. Go be a mayor; maybe then you can be governor; and after that, maybe you can run a nation or serve in the Senate.
In any case, there is certainly light at the end of our current tunnel.
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