You may recognize this voice, especially if you watch a lot of C-SPAN.

I was on an airplane not too long ago where I sat down next to this mother and daughter,

80 and 60. They wanted to know who I was. Why are people paying attention to me?

Ask me if I was a professional athlete, which at my age is quite the compliment.

That is Corey Booker. He did play college football at Stanford, but that was a long time ago.

He's 56 now, and he is a United States Senator from New Jersey.

And I said, no, I'm a United States Senator.

And they suddenly did what most Americans would do when they meet a Congress person out in the wild.

And they don't know what party they're in.

They want to know, are you on my team or their team? They said, Republican or Democrat. And I said,

ma'am, I'm a Democrat. And she looked at me so angrily, crossed her arms and said, well, I should have

brought my Trump hat and swiveled away from me. I go, ma'am, ma'am, Donald Trump. Oh, my gosh, he signed two of the biggest bills I've ever written in my life into law.

One of those bills promoted criminal justice reform. The other one, which was tucked into

Trump's 2017 tax laws, boosted incentives for investing in low-income neighborhoods.

Let me tell you, by the time we landed, we were talking and laughing and sharing stories,

and I was affirming to her the truth that we all in this nation have so much in common.

Americans may have a lot in common, but for good while now, we've been living in a time of violent political attacks and outright assassinations.

These days, the idea of talking politics with your seatmate on a plane just isn't the norm anymore,

if it ever really was. But Cory Booker seems to truly believe what he says about how much we have

in common. I say seems to believe because

it can be hard to tell how real someone's enthusiasm is. Booker's enthusiasm certainly feels real,

and it is definitely abundant. In Washington, he is widely thought of as a bridge builder.

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