Garrison Keillor on Action Heros as Politicians

TIME -- You go for a walk on a summer night and notice the little ramps carved into curbs at street corners. People sat through a lot of meetings to get that accomplished. It was a boon to the wheelchair crowd and also to parents pushing strollers and kids riding bikes. It made life slightly more civil and friendly. Government works through small, incremental changes, and action heroes are much too high and mighty to take notice of these or other small details, but the changes are real, and in the end, we prefer government to heroism. My 5-year-old daughter can look forward to opportunities larger than those her grandmothers enjoyed, in a world in which men and women move freely as equals. No hero strode upon the scene and brought that about; it happened through politics.