Hillary and Barack in Unity: the Dems got it right

When Barack said, "I don't know how she does it in heels," I remembered the famous quote about Ginger Rogers: ""Sure [Fred Astaire] was great, but don't forget she did everything he did backwards . . . and in high heels!" There is no doubt that Hillary Clinton's campaign was hammered by media coverage that was sexist, stupid and ugly. The nature of sexist attacks allows them to be more blatant in the media than racial attacks which need to be less direct. So while Obama was never attacked directly for being black, Hillary was attacked for being a woman. That's what the "tears in New Hampshire" comments were about, as was Chris Wallace's idiot statement that she was where she was only because of her marriage.

And after going through all that, to stand in solidarity with Barack Obama and publically pledge, again, to do all she can to get him elected, shows that she is both dedicated to the cause of winning back the White House (and all that will mean) and that she is the good, honorable and courageous person so many of us respected and were excited by in the 90s. Today, in Unity, we saw the "old" Hillary in a lot of ways, the person who was not trying every possible tack to win the nomination but the leader who knows the right thing to do and is doing it. I know that it must be terribly painful for her, to speak for Obama's candidacy and not her own, to have dreamed of the triumph of 2008 for so long only to have it slip away. (Warning to anyone who wants to win anything: Avoid Terry McAuliffe like the plague.) But Hillary has the guts and the deep-seated goodness to do that right thing despite the personal cost.

She also delivered what may be her best line of the campaign: "John McCaIn and George Bush represent different sides of the same coin, but it doesn't add up to a whole lot of change." Humor was not her forte in this campaign, but that line was great.

In saying that the Dems got it right — that the right person was selected as our nominee — is not to say Hillary would have been a bad choice. I know she would have defeated McCain just as surely as Obama will. I don't know that she would have had the kind of coattails he will, or that her focus on a few states rather than his 50-state attack (he, after all, kept Dean at the DNC where she would have fired Howard as her first act as nominee) would yield the down-ticket results I think Obama is going to deliver. But she would have beaten McCain and the Democrats would still sweep into the Congress in much the same manner as we'll see in November.

But listening to the two speeches today, you see a tremendous difference, and it's one that's going to matter more and more as the campaign progresses. Hillary's speech was fine. She spoke forcefully, she hit the right notes, she says the things that let the audience know where she stands and what she'll be doing. She does a good job of getting the crowd behind her, but in any circumstance where she and Obama speak together — it's not even close.

Barack Obama has become the great orator of our day. Those who claim his words are all flash and not substance are wrong in two vital ways. One, his candidacy has as much substance as Hillary's. There programs are about 95% the same, from health care to Iraq to the economy. He has detailed programs on every issue, and he can do the wonk think with the best of them. But more than being an excellent public servant, Obama knows that the real substance that matters is not in position papers or legislation but in what people believe.

A line that is very true from the Bible: "Without a vision, the people perish." Even stripped of its religious connotations, these are words to be heeded. Obama's great genius is that he can use words to not merely make people feel hopeful — which dim-witted commentators make out as little more than happy feelings and overall a bad thing — but that he enables them to see for themselves what is possible and what is necessary. He does not provide a vision for people to accept; he stirs within people the creative capacity to see the vision they carry inside.

Most people know what they believe and what they hope for. But politics seems to them a universe in which they are not welcome, in which they could not survive. Barack Obama lets them know that there is no separate place where politics happens: there is only here, the place where the ordinary people of the nation lead their extraordinary lives. His words stir up within them the realization that all they need do is something and they will be part of the great movement for change of which he is but the figurehead.

This is a gift Hillary does not have. She inspires at a more ordinary level, the kind of mundane political inspiration that may get people to work for an electoral victory but does not change how they view the world or themselves. That's what Obama does: He leads people to realize what is possible, not because of Barack Obama but because of themselves. He echos without speaking directly Howard Dean's great clarion call: "You have the power!"

Hillary Clinton could have won this election, and she would have been a terrific president. But the voters in the Democratic primary made the right choice. We need more than a great president. We need one who brings along the American people in a way they've never been involved in the politics before. Thats' what Barack Obama is doing, and that's why he is the right choice for the Democrats, for the nation and for the world.