Hillary Clinton's Speech at the Democratic National Convention, August 26, 2008

Hillary Clinton's speech in mile-high Denver, Colorado, on August 25th, laid to rest a number of nagging questions and worries. Questions and worries about loyalty and betrayal, about ship-jumping and proper rules of the game, about race and gender and evenhandedness when it is someone else's fair turn to carry the mantle; questions and worries about the likelihood of victory, and even of defeat, in the face of all this -- defeat of a party seemingly about to tear apart with victory in plain sight.

It was a well-crafted speech delivered with finesse and from the heart. No one can seriously doubt her commitment now to her party's cause in the coming elections. No one will doubt her respect for Democracy's verdict.

She has clearly put principle and party before self. And I think her party -- its members -- will remember her for a long, long time. They will remember her very, very fondly.

Those who watched her entire speech, including yours truly, will too. They will never forget her graciousness and strength of character, which, admittedly, was latelt out of sight to those who did not support her -- did not, indeed, care much for her -- in the heat of a prolonged nomination battle.

No one knows what the final verdict will be in November, in the Presidential elections. And yet one gets the feeling that by an historic act of will, by the sheer performance of one person, the door to the White House has somehow, just that palpably, shut in McCain's face. One gets the feeling that things are going to begin to get "elephant" for a Republican lot which, this same August, had begun to dream, against earlier odds, an impossible dream.

And no one knows what lies in Hillary's future. Yet there is this faint hint, in the aftermath of her delivery, that her party is not about to see the last of her, and that she is "not done with it" just yet. Indeed, in that singular delivery, she brought herself forth anew -- in an amazing moment of re-birth. She blazed an invisible path which no one will have the strength to cross, and which may yet see a woman in the White House, within a decade, as President -- a President called Hillary.