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<H1>Here's another election take... no need to pretend to be Cnadian
anymore.</H1>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>All the best,Visionaries!</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Linda Pall</DIV>
<H1> </H1>
<H1>Garrison Keillor: Let's take some time and savor this moment</H1>
<P class=precede>People the world over like us! They really like us! Even the
French!</P>
<P class=byline><B>By GARRISON KEILLOR</B> </P>
<P class=timestamp>Last update: November 16, 2008 - 9:24 AM</P>
<DIV class=storyBody>
<DIV class=articlePageDiv id=pageDiv1>
<P>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!!!</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>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.</P></DIV>
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<P>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.</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>Garrison Keillor's column is distributed by Tribune Media Services.
</P></DIV></DIV>
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