It was just a few weeks ago we were still talking about Hillary Clinton — though her challenge to Obama’s candidacy seems like ancient history now. We’ve moved on, thank god, and our man is taking his show to a larger venue, and, like a small personal musical moving to Broadway there are bound to be some hiccups along the way.

I’m already starting to hear from early adapters complaining that they liked Obama before you did, that they never doubted for a second he would be the candidate and then the president — people who are looking down their nose at folks who are just now getting on the bandwagon. Danger, Will Robinson! If you sit around pouting like some Modest Mouse fan who hates to see her former favorite indie group playing at Madison Square Garden, you will miss the fun of the big parade. Because, inevitably, as Obama presents himself to a larger audience, his message will become broader, not more specific, and more inclusive than combative.

Take his first national ad. It’s all hard work and accountability, a flag pin and family values — you know, the kind of stuff your parents talked about. This is not so much because your parents were right (and you were wrong) about those ideas but because there is a lot of suspicion out there among those who know nothing about him and he needs to allay those fears — and take back some of that language while he’s at it. (You know: whose family, what values?)

Look at the questions the readers of Readers Digest are leaving for the candidates. Some are smart, some are scary — and some are downright off the wall. But overlooking those voters, or taking them for granted, could lead to disaster. Just ask John Kerry, or any number of good candidates who didn’t want to play to a bigger house. A good message will stand up, whether on a fortune cookie or writ large against the sky. Instead of superman at the supermarket it’s going to be Walt Whitman at the Wal-Mart: aisles wide enough for everybody.

I was saddened to learn of the passing of our old friend Amanda Green, restaurateur, raconteur, mother extraordinaire and just all around good person. She died of complications resulting from her long bout with pancreatic cancer this last weekend. The last time I had heard word of her was in the winter, when she called my wife to tell her about her life and troubles and declare herself a survivor.

When I say “old friend,” understand that this is how anyone who came in contact with her felt. Amanda worked the front door at the old La Bouillabaisse on Atlantic Avenue, back when dining in downtown Brooklyn consisted chiefly of pizza and calzone. Her partner, Neil, was the genius in the kitchen but he was a temperamental type who depended on her relentless good cheer to fill the place, and fill it she did. They didn’t have a liquor license and encouraged customers to buy wine from the Heights Chateau next door, but she was happy to pour you something from one of the bottles she had open in the back. There was always a wait but the time passed quickly in her presence.

Amanda was a British expat whose obit said she had been a dancer and exotic bird importer, neither of which surprises me; she had a dancer’s body and was a rare bird herself. She was a bit of a chanteuse as well; I remember hearing her singing to the accompaniment of an electric piano one night, not long after the restaurant had opened. The location had been a Bermuda Triangle for restaurants for years; I remember the proprietor of one short-lived curry joint telling me his business was improving “thanks to the gods” before they failed him and that joint closed too. What he needed was Amanda.

La Bouillabaisse was the site of a few key events in my life. It was there that we hosted a party celebrating the arrival of our daughter, Franny, from Paraguay on one unspeakably cold night in January 1994 and Amanda was there, sharing the joy. (Her first child, Nick, was born not long after.) And it was after one particularly drunken evening there a year and a half later that I concluded that I could drink no more. I remember feeling embarrassed when I told her, a few months later, that I had quit; she liked a glass herself and I was afraid she would pass judgment. But instead she made me feel welcome and clucked about her own intake while pouring me a nonalcoholic beer.

She had some hard times after that: a nasty separation from the father of her children, her bouts with cancer. But she always seemed literally indomitable. Her latest venture was a wine bar on Henry Street that she single-handedly made a destination in Brooklyn Heights, bringing in music and readings but that was not what made it hot. She made anyone who walked in feel welcome, made you feel in fact that your whole life had been leading up to your arrival at that particular spot. It was hard to see that it was she that was exceptional when she went about making you feel so special. It’s a gift, that, the real art of living.

There will be a memorial service for Amanda at Grace Church on Hicks Street, Monday (Bloomsday!) June 16 at 3 pm. Hope to see you there.

Have you seen the speech Obama gave to his campaign staff and volunteers at his HQ in Chicago on June 6? It’s about thirteen minutes of pure unadulterated inspiration, pretty much free of campaign rhetoric and about the best boss-to-staff speech I’ve ever heard. He recalls how low he was last August, the last time he stood before them, and how he admitted to his gaffes and frailties but added “if you guys are willing to lift me up, and pull me across the finish line, then this thing could happen.”

And lo, it came to pass. After complimenting them for creating the best political organization in America, and encouraging them to “do what you do to get your ya-ya’s out — that’s an old sixties expression” he tells them how tough it’s going to be going forward.

“Understand coming back we’re going to have to work twice as hard. We’re going to have to be smarter, we’re going to have to be tougher, our game is going to have to be tighter… I’m going to have to be a better candidate and you’re going to have to be better at what you do… And we don’t have a choice. If we screw this up, all those people I met who really need help, they’re not going to get help. Those of you who are concerned about global warming, I don’t care what John McCain says, he’s not going to push that agenda hard. All of those concerned about Darfur, I guarantee they’re not going to spend any political capital on that. Those of you who are concerned about education, there will be a bunch of lip service and then there will be more of the same….”

We’ve all felt pressure on the job before, we’ve all struggled under some pretty heavy deadlines. But how often has your boss told you the fate of the nation, not to mention the planet and hot spots like Darfur, is in your hands? And a lot of these folks are volunteers! it’s like a St. Crispen’s Day speech for a bunch of kids (mostly) who’ve been living on coffee and donuts. “Now everybody’s counting on you, not just me. And I know that’s a heavy weight. but also what a magnificent position to find yourself in where the whole country is counting on you to change it for the better.”

The happy few listening look solemn, even teary at times. Those who accuse him of being messianic are missing the point. He is not asking us to embrace him as hero, he is asking us to be heroic ourselves, to work for the ideals we espouse. He is asking the world of those who believe in him and offering our country in return.

Sounds like a plan.

I fled NYC this morning in hopes of beating the heat in Connecticut. I had been listening to public radio to catch Hillary’s endorsement of Obama but just as she was about to take the podium the signal began to fade — a fitting end to her campaign, or at least my interest in.

From the highlights I saw when I got to the house we have rented she did what she needed to, mentioning Obama by name 14 times in a 30 minute address, and her followers, six thousand of whom had signed up on her website to attend the event, seemed mostly enthusiastic (though there were scattered boos). No one was holding up a McCain sign.

Indeed, she seemed more fired up here than she did giving her non-concession speech Tuesday night perhaps because this address was a bit more reality-based. Tuesday, at the end of another split decision, she was speaking in an auditorium two floors below ground in NY, meaning cell phones and text messages could not be received. This not only gave new meaning to the phrase “bunker mentality,” it meant she couldn’t get Obama’s call congratulating her on her victory in South Dakota — yet another metaphor for everything that was wrong with her campaign.

I know I have said some mean things about HRC in the last few months, and my remarks were nothing compared to the vitriol that was out there, but my anger was not directed at her positions, virtually indistinguishable from his, or even her style (she doesn’t give a speech the way he does but neither does anyone else). It was the fact that she seemed to think she could fudge her way into victory, talking about Florida and Michigan, touting her 18 million voters as if they constituted an army, reminding people just how close they were in the races.

At some point you have to go with the system what brought you; it would be like complaining at the end of a 6-5 baseball game that the Yankees could have pulled it out if there had just been ten innings. In fact her behavior was starting to remind me of athletes who insist they were on the better team after they’ve lost the championship, or Hollywood stars, busted on some morals charge, who complain about our society’s hidebound attitudes, instead of quietly going off somewhere before reappearing in a movie cameo or a guest spot on a TV sitcom.

Don’t weep for Hillary; she will be force to be reckoned with in politics for years and has finally accepted her role in our shared drama. “The democratic party is a family,” she said today. ” We may have started on separate journeys but today our paths have merged.” The stakes are too high to hold a grudge; look at the fate of the global warming bill that died in the Senate this week, if you need evidence that we need a radical purging in DC. Hillary certainly would have been a change from Bush, and a welcome one, but after seven years of lies and hypocrisy, we need something stronger. Like an exorcism.

I posted last night before the final weirdness of Hillary’s nonconcession speech had sunk in, recalling the words of Elvis Costello:

Romeo was restless, he was ready to kill
He jumped out the window ’cause he couldn’t sit still
Juliet was waiting with a safety net, saying,
“Don’t bury me ’cause I’m not dead yet”

HRC is no teenager (though she can certainly be a drama queen) and even Shakespeare’s star-crossed lover finally took her own life when she realized how badly her plan had turned out. The combination of her unnaturally dimply smile and this image of her spreading her wings, as if marshaling dark forces, make her look more like an old queen in a fairy tale, the evil stepmother who lives to deny others happiness. Think Snow White, Enchanted, anything Jane Fonda has done lately.

Looking at her now, addressing AIPAC, she looks like a fighter in the twelfth round. Following Obama on the dais, as she will now from here to eternity, you can almost feel for her. In Philadelphia, she liked to compare herself to Rocky, giving her handlers an excuse to play that stupid song one more time. But her campaign looks more like Rocky Balboa, the last and most unnecessary sequel to what began as a tired drama. She literally does not know when to quit and may be, literally, incapable.

Lord knows I have romanticized Obama’s rise to power and invoked Joseph Campbell and the challenges of a hero once too often for some of you. But the primaries have become his crucible, his first presidential crisis if you will; just as he needed to jettison not just the Rev. Jeremiah Wright but his whole church he must now resist the call to embrace the acid queen and offer her the VP seat. There is a push on from her and her supporters: the lamentable Lanny Davis is circulating a petition to force Obama’s hand, and followers chanting “Denver!” may well be hanging him in effigy if he doesn’t.

But what does he get, aside from the loyalty of some Clintonistas? A partner he can’t trust, who comes with a divisive organization of her own that will not blend easily into anyone’s administration, plus the extra added bonus of an ex-president just one cup of coffee away from a complete public meltdown. Worst of all he gets a politician who seems to confuse her country’s struggle, make that all struggles, with her own. She tried to end her speech this morning to the pro-Israel lobby on a selfless note, quoting from the biography of “my personal hero, Golda Meir,” but couldn’t resist a touch of self-pity. Describing the phone call she received telling her that the US had recognized Israel, Meir recalled hearing the phone and wondering “what bad news could this be” and Hillary could not resist a scripted aside: “Doesn’t that sound familiar?”

Haha. The bad news is that she must be slain, in her lair if needs be. The good news is we have the man for the job.