Staff Reports
When Senator Cory Booker recently announced his engagement to Alexis Lewis, it was meant to be a moment of joy and celebration. Yet, somewhere between Booker’s gushing statements about grounding his “inner life” and the almost unsettlingly over-the-top engagement photos, one can’t help but question the authenticity of it all. It’s almost as if the engagement was less about love and more about shoring up political optics for yet another presidential run. After all, even in our supposedly “woke” society, a 56-year-old bachelor doesn’t exactly enchant the voters in the way Booker hopes.
Booker’s announcement was delivered with a sugary veneer meant to inspire awe and admiration. Instead, his words read like a Hallmark card on steroids—filled with empty platitudes and new-age jargon. The phrase “ground and center my inner life” raises more eyebrows than spirits. One has to wonder if Booker has mistaken life advice from a meditation app for something resembling genuine human emotion. Just how unmoored was his “inner life” before Alexis came along, one might ask with a quizzical tilt of the head?
The engagement photos accompanying Booker’s announcement, meanwhile, manage to inject a dose of unintended comedy into the affair. The couple’s maniacal happiness is not the serene joy one might expect from two people embarking on a lifelong journey together. Instead, it’s the kind of exaggerated happiness you might see when someone opens a gift they’re only pretending to like. If pictures could speak, they would shriek, “Look at us, we’re happy!” but in a way that makes you question why they’re trying so hard to convince anyone, including themselves.
Yet, perhaps the real mystery here is why anyone continues to take a politician like Booker seriously when he serves up these heaping helpings of emotional fluff. His engagement might offer a brief diversion from the serious issues facing the country, but for voters looking for authenticity and strength in leadership, Booker’s attempt to humanize himself through overly-glossy and highly-scripted personal revelations falls flatter than a pancake. It’s almost as if he’s trying to prove that there’s depth behind his perpetual smile, but ends up confirming how shallow the waters really are.
In a world craving real connection and genuine leadership, Booker’s engagement—a maneuver that seems designed to make a future presidential campaign more palatable—does little more than underscore why he struggles to make an impact beyond political theater. It’s a textbook case of overcompensation, filled with catchphrases and glitzy photos but lacking the sincerity and grounding that truly connects with the American people. Meanwhile, conservatives everywhere find it hard not to chuckle at yet another episode of progressive politicians trying, and failing, to sell us on their latest act of personal branding.
