I’ve never been a big fan of the Clintons, but wow, they sure know how to put on an impressive show when they need to.

Both of their futures depended on making a credible display of support for Barack Obama after he beat out Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, and they sucked it up and did what they needed to with style at the Democratic National Convention over the last two days.

Hillary Clinton celebrated her own historic campaign while making a noble effort to deliver her supporters to Obama against John McCain.

The constant smile on her face often looked like the one painted on the Joker in Batman movies, but her performance was convincing enough to position her as the frontrunner for her party’s nomination in 2012 if Obama falters this year.

Bill Clinton’s speech on why he thinks Obama is the superior candidate against McCain was simply masterful, reminding everybody why he’s been perhaps the most successful politician of our time.

More importantly, it went a long way toward restoring the former president’s luster as a senior statesman that was tarnished by his peevish and erratic showing in the last months of his wife’s campaign.

I have no partisan interest in any of this, but I appreciate talent when I see it — and boy, did I see it from the Clintons this week.
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Speaking of talent, you’ve got to admire Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann’s flair for situational politics.

Running as the underdog candidate for mayor in 2004, he didn’t join his opponent Duke Bainum in endorsing their fellow Democrat John Kerry for president against George W. Bush.

Hannemann said that since mayor is a nonpartisan office, voters expect candidates not to be mucking around in partisan races. That stance enabled him to attend both Democratic and Republican events hustling for votes.

Flash forward to 2008 and it’s a different story as Hannemann runs for reelection as the prohibitive favorite.

Nonpartisanship is no longer such a virtue, and Hannemann has attached himself to Democratic nominee Barack Obama like a gob of gum on his shoe — a well-calculated move to further his ambition for a future in Washington.

Being a politician wouldn’t be nearly as much fun if voters had longer memories.

I was invited to speak yesterday to the Pan Am Association, made up of former employees of the iconic airline that is so entwined with Hawai’i’s history.

Before getting into a discussion of election issues, I recalled how I first arrived in Hawai’i on a Pan Am flight in 1963 and used a Pan Am tote bag to carry my books around Hilo High. It was the 1960s version of a locker.

It was an especially bright and lively group and we had a good discussion, but the highlight for me came afterward when they presented me with a brand new Pan Am bag just like the one I used to carry at Hilo High.

“Be careful with this,” I was told. “They’re getting hard to come by.”

Don’t worry. I’ve been trying to find one of these for years and it immediately became one of my most prized possessions. I spent the rest of the afternoon holding it in my lap and thinking about younger and simpler times.

I’ve been doing a lot of that lately with my 60th birthday coming up soon. My three younger siblings visited a couple of weeks ago to rub it in and remind me that I’m the new family patriarch after the deaths late last year of our Mom and Uncle Henry, the last of their generation.

That was certainly food for a lot of contemplation — and a responsibility I’m not sure I’m ready for. You can read more about that in my column in the Opinion section of today’s Advertiser, “Assuming a new role of family patriarch.”

While the Democratic National Convention was being wowed by Michelle Obama and Ted Kennedy last night, Republican John McCain was where the votes really are — on the Tonight Show.

Don’t snort. A study a few years ago by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press found that nearly a quarter of adults under 30 regularly obtain information about candidates from comedy programs and more than half sometimes do.

And with the pithy coverage the political conventions get on the networks these days, there may be more visibility yucking it up with Jay Leno. McCain has appeared there 13 times.

He joked about his age — “My Social Security number is 8″ — and played the POW card to dig out of the embarrassment of not knowing how many houses he owned, noting he didn’t have a house during his 5 1/2 years of captivity in Hanoi.

After McCain worked hard to outdo Barack Obama in praising Hillary Clinton, Leno asked, “Why not pick her for vice president?”

These appearances can come back to haunt. Burned into my memory is an appearance McCain made on the David Letterman show shortly after 9/11 during which he told the following joke:

Question: What will Osama bin Laden be for Halloween?

Answer: Dead.

Didn’t happen, big guy. George W. Bush is almost gone and Osama is still around.

After seven years of proof that cocky talk in the absence of effective action doesn’t make for good foreign policy, I’d love to hear McCain’s new take on that one.

It’s been quite a time of athletic triumph for our state and country.

Our Waipio team won the Little League World Series, beating out more than 6,000 teams from around the world that started the competition two months ago in most impressive fashion by staging a 6-run rally in the final inning to win the U.S. title and then routing Mexico for the world championship.

A dozen athletes with Hawai’i ties had a hand in Olympic medals, including golds for Bryan Clay in the decathlon, Natasha Kai in soccer and Clay Stanley in volleyball.

And U.S. men’s basketball ended a series of humiliating losses in international competition since 2000 with a convincing gold medal performance.

After losing with talented but self-absorbed players who never jelled as teams, U.S. basketball made a three-year commitment to bringing together the right players and coaches who believed in teamwork over individual glory and simply refused to lose.

I was struck by how these successes were as much a triumph of leadership as athletic skill. In every case, there was a solid plan for victory, and all the key players bought into the plan and worked as teams to bring home the glory.

I wonder how much more progress Hawai’i could make on intractable problems from education and energy costs to traffic and infrastructure if our political leaders had the athletes’ spirit of working together for the common good instead of bickering endlessly in cheap attempts to grab credit and jockey for personal position.

It’s fine for public officials to issue proclamations and sponsor parades for our athletic heroes to get in on the glory, but it would be nice if they’d also recognized that there’s something important about leadership to be learned.

It’s good to be back from vacation. Well, not really, but let’s “flASHback” anyway on the week’s news that amused and confused:

• Hawai’i soldiers going to the Middle East gathered with 7,000 supporters at Aloha Stadium to try a world record group hug. If only we could end the war that way — or at least the feud between state and city law enforcers at ‘Iolani Palace.

• Would-be monarch James Akahi planned to chain himself to the throne when his group broke into ‘Iolani Palace, but he couldn’t find it. The only throne this “king” will ever sit on has a flush handle on it.

• Jerry Coffee of the local McCain campaign dissed Barack Obama’s visit to Hawai’i, saying: “John McCain would have taken more time to visit historical sites and been more generous with the public.” Talk is cheap. Why not come show us?

• Gov. Linda Lingle will speak at the Republican Convention and campaign on the Mainland for McCain. With her Hawai’i GOP contesting barely half of local legislative seats, she has plenty of time to fly around auditioning for her next job.

• Mayor Mufi Hannemann’s new campaign ad shows him passing a basketball to fellow ‘Iolani alum Derrick Low. Good to see he’s picked up a new hoops skill since high school.

• The airline getting to be known as “going, going, gone!” saw quarterly losses double despite the shutdown of Aloha Airlines. On the bright side, its pilots stayed awake this quarter.

• Kapiolani Community College Chancellor Leon Richards joined more than 100 college leaders in calling for a debate on lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18. That’s one way to become the toast of the campus.

• A Mililani man allegedly assaulted his wife after she tossed a video game she thought he played too much. After all those hours at the joystick, you’d think the dude would know that Super Mario is supposed to save the princess, not choke her.

• Honolulu Zoo vets think their Sumatran tiger Chrissie might be pregnant, but they aren’t sure. Every time they try to give her the rabbit test, she eats it.

• Hawaii is second-thinnest state behind Colorado, a national report says. They must be measuring us around our wallets.

And the quote of the week …

… from state economist Pearl Imada Iboshi:

“Some people are panicking, but the numbers aren’t that bad.”

Whew, I was starting to worry about the 2,500 layoffs, the 45-percent increase in bankruptcies and the double-digit drop in visitor arrivals.