The Bill and Hill Era.(The Talk of the Town)(Bill and Hillary Clinton)

The Clinton Era at the Democratic National Convention (and two days out of a four-day event is an era, maybe an epoch, possibly an age) dawned at 8:38 P.M., Mountain Time, on Tuesday. The opening act--a lapsed Republican, a retired admiral, a motley crew of governors--had come and gone, the houselights in the Pepsi Center had dimmed, and the introductory film unspooled. On the giant telescreens flanking and facing the lectern, a fuzzy black-and-white snapshot of Baby Hillary appeared. When the lights came up again, there she was, all blond hair and burnt-peach gabardine, waving and smiling and striding and clapping.

High, high up in the cheap seats, a woman named Judi Lanza ("like Mario") listened to the speech. Lanza is a registered nurse from Goffstown, New Hampshire. Last fall, Hillary came to Lanza's house for a roundtable on health care. Lanza has pictures to prove it--Hillary in the Lanzas' dining room, flanked by Judi; her husband, Joseph, a retired cop turned truck driver; and their three grown kids, Joseph, Jr., Jennifer, and Jeffrey. Judi just missed getting to be a delegate, so she came to the Convention on her own, as a volunteer. She listened hard. When Hillary said, "I will always remember the young man in a Marine Corps T-shirt who waited months for medical care," Judi teared up a little. And when Hillary said, "Those are the reasons I ran for President. Those are the reasons I support Barack Obama. And those are the reasons you should, too," Lanza--eyes fixed on the little screen of her video camera, a firm set to her round chin--nodded vigorously.

"I've been calling my friends, trying to convince them to go with Obama," Lanza said after the benediction. "I met her again, after she conceded, on her unity day, in New Hampshire. Him, too. She said she remembered me."

A couple of hours later, at a party thrown by MSNBC at the art-filled home of Scott Coors, a liberal outlier in a family that has funnelled mighty rivers of beer money to conservative think tanks, three media ...