Hillary Clinton's big finish
Critic's Notebook
The response is rapturous as she gives a speech full of fire and humor.
As infomercials go there has been a good deal of suspense in the Democratic convention. Monday night there was the question of the ailing Ted Kennedy. Last night we had What Will Hillary Do?
In the narrative as told and retold by pundits, these would be crucial moments in the Democratic family melodrama, perhaps the most crucial of the convention, their import not only symbolic but practical: Clinton finished the primaries as the head of an army of 18 million, but some of the troops had not gotten the word that that war is over. It was an especially difficult position, because she would be held to account not for her actions but for her thoughts, not for what she would say but how she would say it.
As was the case Monday, most of Tuesday's speakers went uncovered by the media, which prefer to show their own talking heads discussing things that haven't yet happened.
But everyone clocked in for the evening program, which built from the low-key former Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner, square-jawed and flag-pinned, to the burly, broad, string-tied Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a fire-stoker: "Stand up, Colorado! Michigan, stand up!"
And then a short introductory film began with an unexpected burst of the Kinks' "You Really Got Me," as if to say that, Obamamania notwithstanding, Hillary is a rock star. And everything that followed confirmed the claim.
She came on, all in orange, to rapturous response, as "a proud mother, as a proud Democrat, as a proud senator from New York, a proud American, and a proud supporter of Barack Obama," and hit those points from different angles again and again. It was never a question of her seeming to be sincere or insincere in her support of Obama -- there was too much energy in the performance to even think about it. Freed from the campaign, she seemed relaxed and happy, full of humor ("my sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits") but full of fire too. This was her own big finish -- both an endorsement and a kind of acceptance speech, as a force in the party and the most important woman in America.
robert.lloyd@latimes.com
