Guess who's running for president?

I'd put my money on Cory Booker in 2020, especially after the way he's been behaving lately.

It seems like I can't turn on the TV news without coming seeing our junior senator holding forth on one issue or another, always quite eloquently.

Rhetoric is not a problem for Booker. Consistency is quite another thing.

For as long as I've known him, Booker's No. 1 claim to fame has been his advocacy of alternatives to the current system of public education.

The first print reference I could find was from way back in 2000. Booker was a mere Councilman in Newark back then, but he was already attracting national media attention.

Here's an article from the Tampa Tribune about a speech he made to a group called Children First:

"Booker, a former Stanford football player, Rhodes scholar and a graduate of Yale Law School, told the Children First audience that he used to think 'an organization like this was a scourge on America.'"

The article went on to tell how "Booker saw some troubling things in the schools" when he moved into a troubled neighborhood in Newark.

"Whichever school can get the job done should get the government dollars," the article quoted him as telling the Tampa audience:

That's fine with me. But I doubt it would be fine with the electorate in a Democratic presidential primary, especially when they found out who sat on the board of Children First.

That's Betsy DeVos, now known as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

Booker found himself in a tough spot when President Trump nominated DeVos to that post. Over the years he's made many speeches to organization with which she and her hubby, former Amway president Richard DeVos, were associated.

But no one wriggles out of a corner better than Booker. Betsy's not his buddy anymore.

"I have long-supported targeted, accountable school choice initiatives to help ensure that poor children in chronically failing schools have the opportunity to receive a quality public education," he said in a statement. "But there are a number of departures between Mrs. DeVos policy beliefs and mine that prevent me from supporting her."

I suspect the most important such departure is the assessment of many liberal groups, such as the Sourcewatch website, that when it comes to Children First, "Its mission is to eradicate public schools in the United States."

That's not the sort of thing Democratic primary voters want to hear. The teachers' unions are the strongest force in the national Democratic Party.

So don't expect Booker to be speaking at the next session of Children First.

But do expect is him to be in the running for president in the next cycle. In fact I'd go so far as to rank him as the front-runner to win the nomination.

That's not just because of the weakness of the potential field. It's because Barack Obama long ago cut the template for the sort of primary run Booker could make.

A few years ago I offered this assessment of Booker's chances if he'd decided to take a shot in 2016:

"What Obama showed in the 2008 Democratic primary is that it is almost impossible to beat a candidate who can corral both the urban minority vote and the votes of suburban liberal do-gooders. In that regard, the Stanford-educated, TV-savvy Booker could turn out to be Barack Obama on steroids."

Had he run, Booker in 2016 could have done the same thing to Hillary Clinton that Obama had done in 2008.

Clinton argued back then that she could get the black vote. That sounded good on paper. But when I attended an Obama event in Trenton that year, I realized he was generating the same sort of excitement among African-Americans as John F. Kennedy had engendered among Irish Catholics in my youth.

Booker didn't take that shot in 2016. Much like another ambitious Jersey pol named Chris Christie did in 2012, he decided to wait his turn.

That was a big mistake for both these Jersey guys.

By 2016, Christie was done in first by his own ambition in the form of the Bridgegate scandal. But when it comes to ambition, Booker makes Christie look like a shrinking violet. If you doubt that, name another political candidate who can sweet-talk the voters not just in Spanish but Hebrew.

Booker was coy when asked by my colleague Tom Moran recently about his plans for 2020, saying "It's irresponsible for any Democrats to talk about 2020 when we are in such crisis."

If I may translate into a fourth language - political speak - that means, "Of course I'm running. Name a Democrat who can beat me."

I can't think of one.

And I don't imagine Booker can either.

PLUS: The cost of education is the No. 1 factor in bankrupting the state. As I noted in this column from 2009, if the cost of education in New Jersey had kept pace with the cost of living, the per-pupil cost of schooling would be less than a third of the current $18,000 annually.

When we adopted the income tax in 1967, that was supposed to permanently solve the property-tax crisis. Instead the education bureaucracy ate up all that money - and lots more:

"Let's look at the cost of our public schools. In 1972, the per-pupil cost of education in New Jersey was a mere $1,000. That's about $5,000 in today's dollars. At that level, we would not have a property-tax crisis. If our education system had performed as well as our mail-delivery system, our income tax would pay for all school costs and a good chunk of our county and municipal tax bills as well."

At some point our political class has to accept that the current model of public education is simply too costly to be maintained.

Perhaps DeVos will be able to make some progress on that in the Trump administration.

She'd better. If the Democrats ever get in again, the sky's the limit.

Fortunately there's little chance of that if the Democrats keep trying cheap tricks like keeping the Education Secretary from entering a school.

No one likes a sore loser. And at the moment that term describes the entire Democratic Party elite.

ALSO - I'M ON VACATION: By the time you read this I should be on a flight to Costa Rica for a week or so of surfing.

I may post the odd photo or two - just to make you jealous. But I hope to avoid anything serious.