Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who has spent the past several days working to clean up his Hurricane Sandy-damaged city, continues to be the coolest politician around. A lot of people think Barack Obama is cool because he exchanges Christmas cards with Beyoncé and plays basketball. And, relative to the staid, ancient, racist, sexist country club members who tend to populate U.S. politics, that is pretty cool! But as an individual case, President Obama is not cool—he is just not the kind of dusty old asshole we’ve come to expect from politics. (My colleagues Max Read and Mobutu Sese Seko have done a nice job of explaining this further here.)

Cory Booker, on the other hand, thus far seems to be the genuine article when it comes to coolness. He’s got a shaved head; he avoids dad jeans; he fights his own security detail to rush into burning buildings and save ladies. On top of all that, as you can see above, he personally tweets at probably stoned people who ask him to bring them munchies. Barack Obama, by contrast, makes awful “Romnesia” jokes on Twitter. 

It is not even a contest. Cory Booker is basically the only cool prominent politician and I can’t wait until he is our next black president.

—Cord