Hillary has spoken and it is good.

Senator Clinton’s speech Tuesday night to assembled Democrats and watchers around the nation and the world was superb. The historian Michael Beschloss said it was the best he’d heard her give.

Like a lot of Democrats, I was holding my breath.

Follow up:

Would she be seduced by her diehard supporters into withholding approval from Barack Obama? Would she endorse him so half-heartedly that it was a slap in the face? Rested from her primary labors, relaxed and smiling, she radiated confidence and good will. And she didn’t hold back in saying that John McCain must not be allowed to be president and that Obama is the man to defeat him.

The media are awash in Republican attack ads, and the senator said nothing in her speech to repudiate her earlier remarks that Obama lacks the experience to be president. Before her speech, however, she said emphatically that she didn’t approve those ads. To have said more, I think, would have alienated the very people she wanted to influence to vote for Obama. A lot of women still feel the sting of Clinton’s close defeat. Like many Obama supporters, they were personally invested in their candidate’s success. They identified with her, and her stings were theirs. But whatever wounds Senator Clinton still nurses, Michelle Obama, auditioning for the role Hillary Clinton filled for eight years, says she couldn’t be more supportive, and that, I think, is no more or less than we should expect.

Maybe the junior senator from New York still feels the junior senator from Illinois lacks experience, but as that ever-candid former president Jimmy Carter pointed out, who would have said a governor of Georgia or Arkansas was more qualified?

Beschloss reminded PBS viewers that the speech Ronald Reagan gave after Gerald Ford got the Republican nomination in 1976 was not much of an endorsement, but it was so compelling that it convinced many Republicans that they had chosen the wrong man. You have to wonder if Senator Clinton wasn’t thinking of that as she practiced her lines. Unlike Reagan, she vigorously endorsed the nominee, but the speech was a flawless exhibition of the best that she has to offer, a celebration of the glories of her husband’s administration, and a gentle reminder that there are people—displaced workers, uninsured single moms, wounded veterans—who need the ministrations of a Democratic president.

Had she conducted her campaign in that vein, free of the bellicosity we heard so frequently, she might be giving Thursday night’s speech. Instead, she got seduced by the sirens of war and the advisors whispering in her ear that she must appear militant no matter who the perceived enemy.

As you must have guessed, I’ve been watching the convention through the lens of public television. Tonight, I’m going to brave the elements of commercial television to see what is being wrapped around the business of the Democratic Party. It won’t be pretty, but I hope to learn something about what most viewers experience.

Tomorrow night I’ll be at the Irish Rogue on West 44th Street with fellow members of ACT NOW, the progressive volunteer’s oasis, watching Obama accept the Democratic nomination. Feel free to stop by, and even better, sign up at http://www.actnowny.org. There’s lots to celebrate and you couldn’t find a better crowd to do it with.