I feel grand. I don’t know why. It is the kind of feeling that makes one begin to think in grandiose way.

Ringing in my head this morning was, “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness …”

And then after, I heard the voice of Abraham Lincoln saying, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal… But in a larger sense we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled, here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here...”

Did I really hear the voice of Abraham Lincoln or did I imagine that? Or was that just Halloween?

It is funny, when you are born outside the United States you associate the voice of the first United States president you heard with your coming of age.

The first voice of a U.S. president I heard was Ronald Reagan. I heard it over the radio – BBC or VOA at young age. It must be that week the United States bombed Tripoli. For a long time, it helped shape my perception of the United States of America.

After Reagan was George H. Bush. He was the one who promised a gentler and kinder America. I remembered him for giving Saddam Hussein an ultimatum during the first Gulf war by saying, “This is not a threat. This is not a boast. This is just the way things gonna be.”

And then, there was the teddy bear Bill Clinton. Before Monica, and his “I did not have any relationship with that woman,” I heard Clinton say that “There is nothing wrong in America that cannot be cured with something right in America.”

Those were heart warming days.

And then there was W., our George W. Bush. I am still trying to figure out what I am going to remember him for. “The axis of evil” maybe.

In the next four days, one of these expressions would be the symbol of the next president of the United States: “Yes, we can” or “Drill, Baby, Drill.”