http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/13/opinion/edkeillor.php
Sitting on Top of the World
Wednesday 12 November 2008
by: Garrison Keillor, The Chicago Tribune
The city of Chicago is celebrating the rise of one of their own to
the office of president of the United States.
Be happy, dear hearts, and allow yourselves a few more weeks of
quiet exultation. It isn't gloating, it's satisfaction at a job well done. He was a superb candidate, serious, professorial but with a flashing grin and a buoyancy that comes from working out in the gym every morning. He spoke in a genuine voice, not senatorial at all. He relished campaigning. He accepted adulation gracefully.
He brandished his sword against his opponents without mocking or
belittling them. He was elegant, unaffected, utterly American, and
now (Wow) suddenly America is cool. Chicago is cool. Chicago!!!
We threw the dice and we won the jackpot and elected a black
guy with a Harvard degree, the middle name Hussein and a sense of
humor - he said, "I've got relatives who look like Bernie Mac, and
I've got relatives who look like Margaret Thatcher." The French
junior minister for human rights said, "On this morning, we all
want to be American so we can take a bite of this dream unfolding
before our eyes." When was the last time you heard someone from
France say they wanted to be American and take a bite of something
of ours? Ponder that for a moment.
The world expects us to elect pompous yahoos, and instead we
have us a 47-year-old prince from the prairie who cheerfully ran
the race, and when his opponents threw sand at him, he just smiled
back. He'll be the first president in history to look really good
making a jump shot. He loves his classy wife and his sweet little
daughters. At the same time, he knows pop music, American lit and
constitutional law. I just can't imagine anybody cooler.
It feels good to be cool, and all of us can share in that,
even sour old right-wingers and embittered blottoheads. Next time
you fly to Heathrow and hand your passport to the man with the
badge, he's going to see "United States of America" and look up and
grin. Even if you worship in the church of Fox, everyone you meet
overseas is going to ask you about Obama, and you may as well say
you voted for him because, my friends, he is your line of credit
over there. No need anymore to try to look Canadian.
And the coolest thing about him is the fact that back in the
early '90s, given a book contract after the hoo-ha about his
becoming the First Black Editor of The Harvard Law Review, instead
of writing the basic exploitation book he could've written, he put
his head down and worked hard for a few years and wrote a good
book, an honest one, which, since his rise in politics, has earned
the Obamas enough to buy a nice house and put money in the bank. A
successful American entrepreneur.
Our hero who galloped to victory has inherited a gigantic
mess. The country is sunk in debt. The Treasury announced it must
borrow $550 billion to get the government through the fourth
quarter, more than the entire deficit for 2008, so he will have to
raise taxes and not only on bankers and lumber barons. His promise
never to raise the retirement age is not a good idea. Whatever he
promised the Iowa farmers about subsidizing ethanol is best
forgotten at this point. We may not be getting our National Health
Service cards anytime soon. And so on and so on.
So enjoy the afterglow of the election awhile longer. We all
walk taller this fall. People in Copenhagen and Stockholm are
sending congratulatory e-mails - imagine! We are being admired by
Danes and Swedes! And Chicago becomes The First City. Step aside,
San Francisco. Shut up, New York. The Midwest is cool now. The mind
reels. Have a good day.
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Garrison Keillor is radio host and author. =
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