The way it is.now.

Part one is over; Obama has the nomination and Hillary has
suspended her campaign. The long, hard Democratic campaign for
the nomination has finished, with an end that is surprising. It
was assumed, by myself included, that Hillary would get the
nomination - it was hers for the taking, there were no
contenders.

Then along came Barak Obama, a junior Senator from Illinois, who
somehow - and to be truthful I'm not quite sure how - captured the
American imagination, ran a disciplined campaign and did the
unthinkable - he won the nomination.

When all of this started, I was a Hillary supporter. She was the
best candidate; she was a woman and I was ready for a woman to be
President. If my support was tepid it was because the Clintons
have a mixed history - I admire them and, at the same time, I
don't really like them.

What is off putting about the Clintons? I recall watching the
reportage of the Inaugural Balls in 1992 and thinking: it's nice
to have someone in office who is enjoying being there. Of course,
time went on and the fatal flaws of Bill Clinton exposed
themselves. Arguably the most intelligent man to win the White
House, he was also the most venal since Warren G. Harding; the
White House seemed his ongoing ticket to indulge himself. That
was a pity and was what cost him his opportunity to be considered
one of the great American Presidents.

Those shadows followed Hillary into her campaign, the shadows of
her husband and the legacy he left behind that left so many of us
who admired him/them alienated from the "Clinton Legacy". It was
not the legacy we had hoped they would leave. The Clinton era was
a disappointment and I, for one, didn't want it to be a
disappointment. Mr. Clinton took us, unfortunately, into the
politics of sleaze and that, unfortunately, has hung over his
wife.

It is a new age, a new time. Bill Clinton eschews email in a day
when email is the lingua franca. He is caught in the politics of
the 1990's and those politics are, if not dead, on life support.
The reality is that the digital universe rules more than the
Clintons accepted. Hillary won the day at the beginning by
announcing her candidacy on the internet and failed during the
campaign to use it again as effectively. Obama and his campaign
mastered the medium once they got underway, becoming ever more
skillful as they went on.

I have spent a good part of this past weekend reading the exegesis
of the campaign and the consensus of the pundits seems to be, that
at the end of the day, Hillary [and Bill] ran a campaign out of
the 1990's when it was the 21st Century. They also ran a campaign
with people from the past who had scores to settle with each other
and used this campaign as a way to do so. And it was obvious to
the public that something was going on backstage that wasn't
helping the onstage performance.

Obama and his folks were disciplined; Clinton and her husband
appeared to be anything but disciplined. Bill Clinton, one of the
GREAT political individuals of the 20th Century, probably did as
much damage to his wife's campaign as he gave help by not
understanding that the times they have a-changed.

There were those who publicly wondered if he wasn't sending
torpedoes into his wife's campaign? Could that be true? Nothing
is impossible, particularly given the complex relationship of
these two people.

Now the moment has come: Hillary Clinton has suspended her
campaign; she has endorsed Barak Obama.. I have read her comments
and they were gracious and supportive. What is powerful is that
Mrs. Clinton seems committed to the essential need of the
Democratic Party to take back the White House and to break the
Republican hold on power and indicates she will use her support
and skills to accomplish that whether or not she is on the
ticket.