Garrison Keillor is a syndicated columnist whose writings and work I have admired for a very long time. He has hundreds of thousands of other admirers all around the world.
He wrote a column recently that was passed on to me, and I should like to lift a quote or two from it here. Says Mr. Keillor…
“It was dishonest, cynical men who put forward a clueless young woman for
national office, hoping to juice up the ticket, hoping she could skate
through two months of chaperoned campaigning, but the truth emerges: The
lady is talking freely about matters she has never thought about.
“The American people have an ear for B.S. They can tell when someone’s mouth is
moving and the clutch is not engaged. When she said, “One thing that
Americans do at this time, also, though, is let’s commit ourselves just
every day, American people, Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I
think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be
exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money
and loaning us these dollars,” people smelled gas.
“Some Republicans adore her because they are pranksters at heart and love
the consternation of grown-ups. The ne’er-do-well son of the old
Republican family as president, the idea that you increase government
revenue by cutting taxes, the idea that you cut social services and
thereby drive the needy into the middle class, the idea that you overthrow
a dictator with a show of force and achieve democracy at no cost to
yourself — one stink bomb after another, and now Governor Palin.
“She is a chatty sportscaster who lacks the guile to conceal her vacuity,
and she was Mr. McCain’s first major decision as nominee. This troubles
independent voters, and now she is a major drag on his candidacy.
“She will get a nice book deal from Regnery and a new career making personal
appearances for forty grand a pop, and she’ll become a trivia question,
‘What politician claimed foreign-policy expertise based on being able to
see Russia from her house?’ And the rest of us will have to pull ourselves
out of the swamp of Republican economics.
“Your broker kept saying, “Stay with the portfolio, don’t jump ship,” and
you felt a strong urge to dump the stocks and get into the money market
where at least you’re not going to lose your shirt, but you didn’t do it
and didn’t do it, and now you’re holding a big bag of brown bananas. Me,
too.
“But at least I know enough not to believe desperate people who are
talking trash. Anybody who got whacked last week and still thinks
McCain-Palin is going to lead us out of the swamp and not into a war with
Iran is beyond persuasion in the English language. They’ll need to lose
their homes and be out on the street in a cold hard rain before they
connect the dots.”
Well now, there is one person who sees things pretty clearly. Let’s hope he’s right about the ability of most Americans to do the same…
Garrison Keillor is the author of a new Lake Wobegon novel, “Liberty”
(Viking).