She handled much of this race with grit and grace, especially when she publicly acknowledged, as she often did, that as a black man her opponent brought history to the table as well. She's also seemed positively bionic, a 60-year-old woman who despite the rigors of campaigning projected the vigor and glow of someone who has scored a facial, a good night's sleep and enough delegates to actually win. Her unwavering enthusiasm made it possible for her to sell the argument that this prolonged engagement on policy issues has been good for the party and good for the country.

But policy is one thing and pandering is another, especially when your opponent has been sure-footed on the high road. When Senator Clinton started to style herself as a dab hand with guns in Pennsylvania and an enemy of the intellectual elites in Indiana, she began to validate the opinions of all those who believe the Clintons—no matter which—would do anything to win. Her candidacy has had special resonance for many women, no question, but that means she has special obligations, too. And one of those obligations is to see that the lesson learned is not that women running for office can be just as skeevy as their male counterparts.

That's not the legacy she wants, one of old-style politics in jewel-toned jackets: more spoiler, less stateswoman, more Ralph Nader, less Eleanor Roosevelt. She's better than that. And she has an example always before her, that of the last Democratic president, her husband, who tarnished his luster because he acted in the moment rather than taking the long view. Senator Clinton is the most prominent woman in America. She needs to think outside the hermetically sealed bubble of her campaign and begin to develop a strategy now for the ways in which she wants to use that: to unify the party, to galvanize her base of voters, to make certain the Democrats prevail in November and perhaps to play a powerful leadership role in government in the years to come.

Everything we thought we knew for sure at the beginning of this contest was wrong. Who believed the woman would be the one to snag the support of working-class men? Who realized her gender wouldn't seem a bit historic to young people reared on equal opportunity? Who knew the money would go to her newbie opponent despite her network of contacts and her lifetime in the political trenches? And who thought the progressive feminist with the Ivy League credentials would ever take a campaign detour in which her slogan might as well have been "the candidate of white folks who believe despite all evidence to the contrary that the other guy is a Muslim"? When her husband pardoned Marc Rich, one supporter said it was no worse than what the Republicans had done in the past. That's not what I call a defense. And it's no kind of legacy for a woman as formidable as Hillary Clinton.

© 2008