[Anyone] No Need Anymore to Try and Look Canadian

[anubis at laplaza.org]

By Garrison Keillor


    Nov. 12, 2008

    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. He

    looks good in the kitchen. He can cook Indian or Chinese but for his

    girls he will do mac and cheese. At the same time, he knows pop

    music, American lit and constitutional law. I just can't imagine

    anybody cooler. Look at a photo of the latest pooh-bah conference --

    the hausfrau Merkel, the big glum Scotsman, that goofball

    Berlusconi, Putin with his B-movie bad-boy scowl, and Sarkozy, who

    looks like a district manager for Avis -- you put Barack in that

    bunch and he will shine.


    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 (FBEHLR), 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 very nice house and put money in the bank. A

    successful American entrepreneur.


    The last American president to write a book all by his lonesome

    self, I believe, was Theodore Roosevelt, who, on graduation from

    Harvard, wrote "The Naval War of 1812," and in my humble opinion,

    Obama's is the better book for the general reader, but you be the

    judge.


    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 a while 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.



    � 2008 by Garrison Keillor. All rights reserved.
    Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.