On Hillary

The weekend papers are filled with "what she did wrong" stories and analysis but the best words that say the most about Hillary Clinton are Hillary's own.

In true Clinton tradition, her final going away speech seems to have been tear-jerking, memorable, historic. The NYT reports that "For 28 minutes, standing alone on a stage in the historic National Building Museum, Mrs. Clinton spoke not only about the importance of electing Mr. Obama, but also about the extent to which her campaign was a milestone for women. She urged women had supported her -- who had turned out at her headquarters, flocked to her rallies and poured into the polls to vote for her -- not to take the wrong lesson from her loss.

" "You can be so proud that from now on, it will be unremarkable for a woman to win primary state victories, unremarkable to have a woman in a close race to be our nominee, unremarkable to think that a woman can be the president of the United States....To those who are disappointed that we couldn't go all of the way, especially the young people who put so much into this campaign, it would break my heart if, in falling short of my goal, I in any way discouraged any of you from pursuing yours."

"At that point the cheers, mostly from women, swelled so loud that Mrs. Clinton's remaining words could not be heard."

That is an elegant bit of reporting and if you think it's easy to pull off in the heat of such a moment, it isn't. But more than that, what an elegant speech. Obama did himself proud as well, in being respectful to Hillary for her role in inspiring his own young daughters.

History will tell, but it seems that Hillary's team failed to fully understand the effect of online to influence people and to drive community, a movement. Much as historians now say the dramatic shift that swept JFK to power was his ability to intuit the power of television while Nixon did not, this may be the great learning and deeper understanding we are to have about the media age we now live in. More traditionally, it seemed to me that Hillary could not win for losing -- that the candidates were neck-and-neck but it was spelled as her failure and her loss, not his failure to gain a greater groundswell if he was so damn popular. Maybe that's the rub when you were a front-runner. She seemed to play an old-fashioned political game of pulling in chips, playing hardball with her opponent and risking "bitch", of being a down and dirty. We are told now that this was the tone of the Clinton years and it is out of fashion now. Who knows what went on in the backrooms at Club Obama. He seemed to be able to keep the weather sunnier, regardless of what may become the truth.

Obama became a master showman, his early tentative and timid tone now replaced with glorious presidential (at least as far as we see in movies) rhetoric. Maybe that's all a president needs to be, much as that is all (I think) a Queen needs to be. Stand for something, give the people something to believe in, stir their flagging hope. After that, doesn't much matter what you do. Maybe you shouldn't go to war unless it's really, really clear you need to. Aside from that, being president might be the easiest job in the world.

We love Bill Clinton, and why? Because he spoke so well. Seemed so charming. We forgave him everything including ....what did he do for a living again?

How perfect that he now makes his living....speaking. Play your best game, that's the message.

For all the talk of "change", ironically, Obama seems very Clinton-ish, with his warm wash of wonderful words. We may have seen Obama's best game. I don't think we've seen Hillary's. And right now, that seems a pity.