Another Home Run

Those crafty Clintons! All this time they kept people worried about what they were going to say in their speeches here at the Democratic National Convention. And all the while, the two of them must have been plotting to give Barack Obama the biggest convention boost people have seen in a long time. Bill Clinton seemed like his old self Wednesday night. Gone was the red faced anger so often seen on the campaign trail.

For a little while last night, it was 1992, or '96, or 2000 all over again. Bill Clinton was once again the man from Hope. He gave a ringing endorsement of Obama, and ticked off reason after reason he must be elected president (he rattles off statistics better than anyone I've ever watched). For the first time, he tied his own successes as president to the potential he sees in the man nominated by acclamation just hours before. That too came as a bit of a surprise. Hillary Clinton released her delegates Wednesday, and the roll call vote got as far as her state of New York when the nomination was affirmed.

It was a bit of theater on a day and night of theater. One didn't envy Joe Biden's position in having to follow Clinton's powerful speech. In fact, as people poured down the escalators and out of the Pepsi Center before the nominee's turn to speak, you began to wonder how many people would actually be left to hear him. No worries. Biden's speech was quite adequate, and at it's conclusion came the surprise appearance of Barack Obama himself. That brought the house down, and certainly made some of those who left wish they'd stayed.

So now the stage changes from the indoor arena to the outdoor stadium. Al Gore and Barack Obama now put the exclamation point on a Democratic Convention that seems to have achieved its goal of unity.

America awaits its nominee.