Clinton electrifies convention with unity plea

Hillary Clinton put the full weight of her presidential campaign and her political career behind Barack Obama in a passionate speech which drew thunderous applause at the Democratic Party’s national convention.

There was no doubt that the former first lady was going to urge her supporters to unite the party and back her former rival, but she commanded the stage in a speech which won widespread praise from Democrats.

“Barack Obama is my candidate and he must be our president,” she declared.

Immediately after her rousing speech, which saw several standing ovations and roars of approval at the Pepsi Centre in Denver, Colorado, the Clinton campaign website announced: “Let us unite.”

Several delegates told reporters Mrs Clinton had done exactly what Mr Obama had wanted, and needed, her to do.

Tensions between the two camps will no doubt remain – some of her senior campaign team have decided to leave the convention early, before Mr Obama accepts the party’s nomination on Thursday night – but her speech asked her supporters, whom she described as “my sisterhood of the travelling pantsuits”, to remember who was most important in this campaign.

“I want you to ask yourselves, ’Were you in this campaign just for me?’ Or were you in it for... all the people in this country that feel invisible.”

But during a 16-month long primary season, Mrs Clinton was one of Mr Obama’s fiercest critics and her remarks will not now simply go away overnight - especially as they have been used in a series of attack adverts from Republican John McCain’s campaign in recent days.

In the latest advert released yesterday, the McCain campaign created its own version of a “3am” advert used by Mrs Clinton earlier this year.

“It’s 3am and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?” the announcer says.

It then cuts to a clip of Mrs Clinton saying: “I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And, Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.”

The announcer adds: “Hillary’s right. John McCain for President.”

In another advert, one former Clinton delegate switched sides and urged other Democrats to vote for Mr McCain.

Debra Bartoshevich, a lifelong Democrat and former Clinton delegate, said she respected the Arizona senator’s “maverick and independent streak” and added: “A lot of Democrats will vote McCain. It’s OK, really!”

This year’s extremely close Democratic primary season saw Mrs Clinton suffer a devastating loss to Mr Obama in Iowa in January.

But she recovered just five days later in New Hampshire with a surprise win following a teary moment on the campaign trail.

She went on to split the Super Tuesday spoils with Mr Obama, taking every big state apart from her rival’s home state of Illinois, but then slumped to a slew of defeats in February.

Again she bounced back, winning the primary election contests in Texas, Ohio, and Rhode Island before taking Pennsylvania after a six-week break between contests which saw Mr Obama on the defensive after inflammatory comments made by his former pastor the Rev Jeremiah Wright.

Born in 1948 in Chicago into a family of “ironclad Republicans”, Hillary Rodham Clinton turned to the Democrats after teenage inner-city work.

She is the first wife of an American president to run for the office and is widely given credit for the fact that her husband became president at all.

Without her drive and ferocious ambition for him, it is said, Bill Clinton might not have aspired even to the governorship of Arkansas.

Widely believed to be a polarising figure in US politics, she is ranked among the world’s most powerful people and has survived intense public scrutiny of her private life, standing by her husband after his “inappropriate” behaviour and televised apology over the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998.

She met Bill at Yale when she was “a frumpy, spectacle-wearing law student”, and married him in 1975, saying: “I fell in love with him because he wasn’t afraid of me.”

Their daughter, Chelsea, who introduced her on stage at the party’s national convention, was born in 1980.

Mrs Clinton became uniquely powerful after her husband’s election to the White House, becoming the first first lady ever to keep an office in the West Wing of the White House.

She was given a formal role in the government to introduce health reforms, but it was a humiliating episode which ended in failure.

At the time, she asserted: “There is absolutely nothing to apologise for.”

But later, in her autobiography An American Story, she admitted she blamed herself “for botching healthcare, coming on too strong and galvanising our opponents”.

Last night she said she was looking forward to seeing Mr Obama sign a universal healthcare bill into law during his presidency.

More problems ensued. Her father died. The Whitewater land deal – which saw her become the first first lady to be subpoenaed – and the mysterious death of one of the partners in her Arkansas law firm all added to the trials and tribulations that beset the Clintons.

Then she embarked on “gender politics”, inviting female journalists to lunch, and starting her own newspaper column.

And there was more than just boredom that motivated her constantly to change her hair-dos.

“If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle,” she said once. And it worked.

But her campaigning style has become increasingly cautious in recent years.

After moving out of the White House and to New York, Mrs Clinton became the first first lady to be elected to public office and the first female senator from the state in 2000.

Re-elected to the Senate by a wide margin last year, she received a boost for her bid to become US President when she was named as the world’s most admired powerful woman in a study compiled for Harper’s Bazaar magazine in February 2007.

She also launched a network for leading women supporters and made use of former President Bill, who was popular with African Americans.

On turning 60 last October, she said was more patient with a “better understanding of what’s really important in life”.

Mrs Clinton, who admitted to getting tired on the campaign trail but continued on regardless, insisted she was not a workaholic, saying she wanted to live “every day to the best that I can”.

Last night’s speech, arguably the most important of her career, must have come close.