Everybody in American journalism is offering their thoughts on how Hillary Rodham Clinton did in her big speech tonight, so why not Loose Cannon? I was there, on the floor as she spoke, and my impressions are as follows:

First, this was a political speech. That’s hardly a bad thing—this is a political convention. What I mean is that Senator Clinton, who, as every sentient being in the United States must know by now, wanted to be delivering a different kind of address on a different night, namely Thursday. When that didn’t happen, other things fell into place. Team Clinton insisted on a prime time slot for Hillary. She got that. Team Obama insisted on a speech in which she emphatically endorsed Barack. They got that.

The whispered speculation in Denver this week has been that Hillary (and Bill) really want Obama to lose in November so she can run again in 2012. That plan won’t work if the Clintons are blamed for an Obama loss, so they have to go through the motions—or so the chatter went. It seemed to me that Hillary met this standard tonight, surpassed it, really. Compare her performance to that of Edward Kennedy in 1980. Caught in a similar situation at the Democratic convention in New York that year, Kennedy barely mentioned the name of his rival, Jimmy Carter—he did so once, and did not ask people to vote for him—and Carter just so happened to be an incumbent Democratic president. So if Teddy reprised himself Monday night, Hillary reprised him, too, and was more gracious than Kennedy was those many years ago. Perhaps her dream is to become the kind of force in the Senate that Ted Kennedy has been—as he did Monday night, she stressed universal health care. In fact, she said she "couldn't wait to watch Barack Obama sign a health care plan into law..." Or perhaps she really does harbor ambitions to run again in four years. She’s certainly entitled to her private plans, and her hopes.

As tonight’s speech ended, and the crowd applauded deliriously, I noticed Harold Ickes, Hillary (and Bill’s) über-loyal aide gazing up at the podium. Ickes had watched the entire speech while standing in the middle of the hall. He had the air of a man who was sad for what might have been, but who was nonetheless secure in the knowledge that he himself had done everything humanly possible to achieve a different result.

 “She met every expectation of her supporters,” Ickes told me. “She certainly met every expectation of Barack Obama’s supporters. She fulfilled her promise as a presidential candidate. That’s why she ran. It was a great speech.”