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.

What Was Lost....or, Vogue

What Was Lost is one of those books you will be hearing about everywhere, as it has enjoyed one of the debuts that seem to happen with greater and greater frequency: a hitherto unpublished and very young author comes out of the gate at a gallop, wins or is shortlisted for things her elders can only dream of, and the book soars to the top of bestseller lists worldwide before being optioned by Miramax (if that's what Miramax does) or Plan B, the production company begun by Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. Plan B options all the good books.

The story begins with a charming take on the Harriet the Spy genre, with Kate Meaney, not mean at all, junior detective. With her notebook and trusty partner Mickey in tow (Mickey being a stuffed monkey who wears a striped suit and spats) she trails suspects through the big shopping centre near her home.

Like Harriet she is sort of lonely and quite an outsider and therefore develops into an interesting, engaging and original character. Her best friend is the son of the news agent, who is really much too old to befriend a ten year old. But, he's a bit of a misfit too and friendship occurs wherever it occurs if you wouldn't mind keeping your filthy suspicions to yourself.

And then the story veers off into a tale of dead ends of all kinds, missed opportunities, missing people, the dead and deadness. Is "deadness" a word? It is certainly a feeling and it pervades the book like the smell of every shopping mall with a fast-food court.

As it turns out, Kate gives someone a life while her disappearance off the face of the earth ends many others, namely that of her friend who could never shuck the suspicion that he was involved in her vanishing. Throughout the book I was hoping that Kate somehow managed to escape the council estate she lived in, managed to disappear into a new life as any undercover junior detective should be able to do.

Heavy treading, this.

The thing is, the entropy, the vortex of same-same and the slow, imperceptible death of hope can really catch even a tiger by the tail. It is so easy to slip into a relationship that's all very nice but not very good, a job that is just a job, it is so easy to let guilt and weakness define you.

I was reading over the weekend a story about how Hillary Clinton is coping with the reality that she may very well not win the nomination despite her hard work, worthiness and determination. One thing struck me -- she is pragmatic, the story said, and knows well enough that someone has to lose but right now she's still got to keep on winning and so simply does not read or listen to anything that nay-says. She needs to keep her eye on the ball, she needs to stay optimistic.

What a practical thing to do. Simply don't let the bad stuff into your head.

And so, as an antidote to this very excellent but nonetheless heavy book I read Vogue cover to cover. Our Biggest Spring Issue Ever! Why Vogue? It is relentlessly upbeat even when it isn't -- even the sad stories about cold mothers and sensitive daughters or whatever are sort of couched. Mother and daughter are attractive and have loads of advantages -- I mean really, they're profiled in Vogue! Vogue is the home of the vitamin enriched sons and daughters of money in the bank, to re-use one of my favorite phrases, and on every page there is the assurance that everything is possible, a pretty girl can decide to design a bag and voila! she's a successful entrepreneur! You can marry a prince really and truly! You can have a glamorous-sounding job that is both truly glamorous and so are you!

Sometimes you need the fairy tales of magazines to offset the hard truths of fiction.