You know what I love to think about while I’m daydreaming in class? How awesome it will be to have a president we can use superlatives to describe! Finally, after eight years of embarrassment, we as Americans can know that our President is the smartest, most capable, and most talented person in whatever room he is in.
AND HE’S BLACK!!! Like I said, what a country.
P.S.: President-Elect Obama’s current approval rating: 70%. Of course that will change, but right now America is on this guy’s side.
Does anyone else want to join me in gushing?!? or is everyone still too exhausted?
I thought this worth posting. You all know that I listen to his program every Saturday night.
chicagotribune.com
Sitting on top of the world
Garrison Keillor
November 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 morn ing, 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,=2 0he p ut 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.
Garrison Keillor is radio host and author.
I think it’s happening! Good call by Obama. Mike Allen has the rationale:
“…some Obama advisers argue that her celebrity and credibility would be a huge asset in his goal of reengaging the United States with allies.
‘You can send John Kerry or Chuck Hagel,’ said one adviser, mentioning some other candidates for secretary of state, ‘or you can send Hillary Clinton. That’s totally different.’
Clinton would be most attractive if Obama concludes that he will have to focus his early days in office on the domestic economy, and will have to essentially outsource heavy-duty foreign travel to his secretary of State.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15614.html
I’ve been waiting for this one.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/11/13/1673635.aspx
I join you! He confirmed, in his first press conference, that he will continue to be the guy we thought he was, sans teleprompter. I know the honeymoon will be over soon but for right now, I’m still very happy!
Nevermind, Marshall showed me the YouTube clip he’s referring to and it’s hilarious.
For anyone who doesn’t get it (I know Dad will)…you have to watch this news clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKO6G0pC0AM
What?!? I have spent like ten minutes trying to decipher this.
A Democratic politician has managed to climb the summit to the Whitehouse….but he’s gay! I mean he’s gay…he’s black!